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HRISTIAN EDUGATORS 
■^m G0UN6IL. 

Ocean Grove, N. J., August 9-12, 1883. 



-c-^Ke^^Jt^S^^^Sje^e-o 



Sixty Addresses by American Educators 

Arranged Topically as follows : 

I. Education and Man's Improvement. 
II. Illiteracy in the United States. 

III. National Aid to Common Schools. 

IV. The Negro in America. 

V. Illiteracy, Wealth, Pauperism, and Crime. 
VI. The American Indian Problem. 
VII. The American Mormon Problem. 
VIII. Education in the South since the War. 
IX. Christ in American Education. 

Tables: Illiterate and Educational Status, 
United States, 1880. 



COMPILED AND EDITED BY 

REV. J. C. HA.RTZELI., D.O. 



NE^A/^ YORK : 

PHILLIPS & HUNT. 

CINCINNATI : 

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CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



Sixty Addresses by American Educators; 



/ 

TOIONAL 



HISTORICAL NOTES UPON THE 



C^t 



DUCATION ^SSEMBLY, 



Ocean GroTe, N. J., August 9-12, 1883. 



ALSO, 



Illiteracy and Education Tables from Census of 1880. 






COMPILED AND EDITED BY 



REV. J. C. HARTZELL, D.D. 






S 1523 1/ 






NEW YORK : 
PHILLIPS & HUNT. 

CINCINNATI : 

WALDEN & STOWE. 

1SS3. 



U 1 3 

Nil 



"^'ducafion is the cheap defense of nations.'''' — Edmuito Buekb. 
'''Moral education is the hulwark of a Stated'' — Fenelon. 

'"''Not democracy in America^ hut free Christianity in America, 
the real key to the study of the j>eqple and their institutions.''^ 

— GoLDwiN Smith. 



Copyright 1883, by J. C. Hartzell. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

EDITOR'S NOTE 6 

I. EDUCATION" AND MAN'S IMPROVEMENT. 

1. Education a Measure of Man's Improvement 7 

By Hon. John Eaton, LL.D., United States Commissioner of Education. 

H. ILLITERACY' IN THE TTNITED STATES. 

1. ADDRESS 17 

By Rev. Herrick Johnson, D.D., of Chicago. 

2. Illiteracy in our Great Cities 13 

By Hon. B. Peters, Editor Brooklyn Daily Times. 

3. Stumbling-blocks, or Stepping-Stones ? SI 

By Robert R. Doherty, Esq., Assistant Editor The Christian Advocate, New York. 

4. The Danger of Delay '. 25 

By Hon. Albion W. Tourgee, Editor The Continent, Philadelphia. 

5. Remarks 30 

By Rev. W. F. Dickerson, D.D., one of the Bishops of the African M. E. Church. 

6. The Poor Whites of the South : Who they are, and Why they are 31 

By Rev. L. B. Caldwell, Ph.D., Tennessee. 

m. NATIONAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 

1. The Year's Work 35 

Report by Prof. C. C Painter, Corresponding Secretary National Education Committee. 

2. National Aid to Popular Education in Europe 38 

By Hon. J. P. Wickersham, ex- United States Consul to Denmark. 

3. Conditions and Prospects of Temporary National Aid to Common Schools 41 

By Hon. H. W. Blair, United States Senator from New Hampshire. 

4. The Voices of Four Presidents 4.'5 

5. The Nation the only Patron of Education Equal to the present EjMERGEncy 47 

By Hon. John Eaton, LL.D., U. S. Commissioner of Education. 

TV. THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 

1. Remarks 55 

By Rev. R. S. Rust, D.D., Secretary Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. 

2. THE Color Line : What it Is and What it Threatens 56 

By Rev. B. T. Tanner, D.D., Editor Christian Recorder, Philadelphia. 

3. The Negro and his Assimilation in America 58 

By Rev. J. W. Hamilton, Pastor People's Church, Boston, Mass. 

4. Education an Indispensable Agency in the Redemption of the Negro Race 62 

By Prof. S. B. Darnell, B.D., Principal Cookman Institute, Jacksonville, Fla. 

5. Assimilation, Not Separation 65 

By Rev. Jabez Pitt Campbell, D.D., one of the Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal 
Church. 

6. The Danger Line in Negro Educatio.v 67 

By Rev. William Hayes Ward, D.D., Editor New York Independent. 

7. Remarks 71 

By Rev. H. L. Morehouse, D.D., Sec. American Baptist Home Missionary Society. 

8. The Negro in America : His Special Work 72 

By Rev. J. C. Price, A.M., Pres. Zion Wesley Institute, Salisbury, N. C. 

9. The Freedmen Progressing 75 

By Rev. J. C. Hartzell, D.D., Assistant Corresponding Secretary Freedmen's Aid Society of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church. 



4 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

10. A Plea for Practical Education for the Negro 77 

By Rev. C. K. Marshall, D.D., Pastor M. E. Church, South, Vicksburg, Miss. 

V. ILLITERACY, "W^EALTH, PAUPERISM, AND CRIME. 

1. The Relation of Education to Wealth and Morality and to Pauperism and Crime. 79 

By Hon. Dexter A. Hawkins, A.M., of the New York Bar. 

2. Relation of Education to Moral Character 87 

By Rev. C. W. Cushlng, D.D., Pastor First Methodist Episcopal Church, Rochester, N. T. 

VI. THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 

1. Remarks 91 

By Gen. T. J. Morgan, Principal State Normal School, Potsdam, N. Y. 

2. An Important Letter : Indian Education 91 

By Hon. H. M. Teller, Secretary of the Interior, Washington. 

3. The Legal Status of the Indian 93 

By Henry S. Pancoast, Esq., Philadelphia. 

4. Christianity in its Relations to Indian Civilization 99 

By Herbert Welsh, Esq., Germantown, Pa. 

5. Woman's Work in solving the i.vdian Problem 102 

By Mrs. A. S. Quinton, General Secretary National Indian Association, Philadelphia. 

6. A New Phase of the Question 105 

By Rev. C. H. Kidder, Rector of St. Clement's Protestant Episcopal Church, Wilkesbarre, Pa. 

7. What shall be Done with our Savages ? 106 

By H. K. Carroll, Esq., Assistant Editor New York Independent. 
6. Practical Results of Indian Education 107 

By J. M. Haworth, Esq., Supt. of United States Indian Schools, Olathe, Kansas. 
9. Indian Civilization a Success 114 

By Captain H. R. Pratt, Principal of Indian Training-School, Carlisle, Pa. 

10. Our Indian Neighbors : Indian population, 1880 117 

11. The Native Tribes of Alaska 118 

By Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D., Supt. of Presbyterian Missions in Alaska. 

Vn. THE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 

1. The Utah Problem 129 

By Rev. A. J. Kynett, D.D., Philadelphia. 

2. Mormonism : Efforts of Christian Churches 130 

By Rev. Henry Kendall, D.D., Sec. of Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church. 

3. Disloyalty of Mormons, and Education in Utah 136 

By Prof. John M. Coyner, Principal Salt Lake Collegiate Institute, Utah. 

4. Sources of Mormon Strength 138 

By Rev. Robert G. M'Niece, Pastor Presbyterian Church, Salt Lake City. 

5. Polygamy Woman's Creed of Mormonism , 141 

By Mrs. Angie F. Newman, Lincoln, Neb. 

6. The Doctrines of Mormonism 147 

By Rev. Theophilus B. Hilton, A.M., B.D., Late Principal of Salt Lake Seminary, and Editor 
of the Utah Review. 

VIII. EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE "WAR. 

1. The South, the North, and the Nation Keeping School 157 

By Rev. A. D. Mayo, Boston, Mass. 

2. Address of Welcome to Northern Teachers and Missionaries in the South 167 

By Rev. Charles H. Fowler, D.D., LL.D., Sec. of the Miss. Society of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church. 

3. Responsive address 173 

By Prof. Saulsbury, Educational Supt. of the American Missionary Association. 

4. History of the Educational Work of the American Missionary association 174 

By Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., Corresponding Secretary. 

5. Educational Work Among the Freedmen by the Methodist Episcopal Church 178 

By Rev. John Braden, D.D., Pres. Central Tennessee College, Nashville. 

6. The Methodist Episcopal Church in the South since the War 183 

By Rev. J. C. Hartzell, D.D., Assist. Cor. Sec. Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 5 

PAGE 

7. Responsive Address 187 

By Gen. S. C. Armstroug, President ol Hampton Institute, Virginia. 

8. The Negro in Slavery and in Freedom— Summary of work by Presbyterians 188 

By Rev. R. H. Allen, D.D., Cor. Sec. of the Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freedmen. 

9. Work of the Northern Baptists Among the Freedmen since the War ]'J5 

By Rev. H. L. Morehouse, D.D., Sec. American Baptist Home Mission Society. 

10. Some Special Results of Northern educational Work in the South 197 

By Rev. R. S. Rust, D.D., Secretary Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. 

11. Work of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Unitarians, and the Friends 

among the negroes since the war 109 

12. Individual Northern Benevolence to the South for Education since the War 201 

SOUTHERN Churches and Education since the War iOl 

13. Roman Catholicisjj and the Negro 203 

14. Education in the South 202 

By Rev. J. G. Vaughan, B.D., Pastor Ames Methodist Episcopal Church, New Orleans, La. 

15. Illiteracy and Poverty in the South 204 

By Rev. J. L. M. Curry, D.D., General Agent Peabody Educational Fund. 

IX. CHBisT nsr American EDUCATioisr. 

1. The Christian Element in Education 207 

By Rev. Lemuel Moss, D.D., President Indiana State University. 

2. Remarks 211 

By Gen. Cyrus Bussey, New Orleans. 

3. Religious Education the Safeguard op the Nation 212 

By Rev. John P. Newman, D.D., LL.D., New York. 

4. Christian Education as a Factor in our National Life 219 

By Gen. T. J. Morgan, Principal State Normal School, Potsdam, N. Y. 

5. The Ballot and the Bible 223 

By Rev. J. M. Walden, LL.D., Cincinnati, Ohio. 

6. Special Services on Sunday, Educational Love-feast, and Beach Meeting 327 

X. LAST -WOBDS. 

1. Summary of the Work and Significance of the Assembly 231 

By Rev. A. J. Kynett, D.D., of Philadelphia. 

2. Closing Remarks 232 

By Rev. J. C. Hartzell, D.D. 

XI. HISTOBICAL NOTES. 

National Education assembly, 1S82 ; Petition to Congress, etc 283 

XH. JOUBNAL OF PBOCEEDINaS 

Of the National Education assembly of 1883 237 

XIH. TABLES GIVING ILLITERACY AND STATUS OF EDUCATION IN 
UNITED STATES, 1880. 

1. Illiteracy in the United States, Census of 1880 250 

2. Number of Persons, Male and Female, in the United States, Twenty-one Years 

of age and over, who cannot write 251 

3. Number op Voters in the late Slave-holding States, Twenty-one Years of Age and 

UPWARD, who could NOT READ AND WRITE IN 1870 AND 1880 251 

4. Total Population, School population, Enrollment, etc., in Eighty-six Cities, 1880. 253 

5. Public and Private School Statistics in the United States 253 

6. Population and Assessed Valuation op Personal Property and Real Estate in 

the States and Territories 1860, 1870, and 1880 254 

7. Amount raised by Taxation for Support of Public Schools in the United States. 255 

8. Table showing how much each State and Territory would receive on the basis 

OF Illiteracy should Congress appropriate $15,000,000 255 

9. Summary of Annual Income and Expenditures for Education in the States and 

Territories 250 

10. Comparative Educational Statistics in the South, 1880 and 1881 25? 

11. National Aid to Popular Education in European Countries 2.'8 

XIV. GENERAL INDEX 201 



EDITOR'S NOTE. 



THE contents of this volume require but a word of explanation. It seemed fitting that 
there should be one platform in Auierica, where once a year, Christian educators and 
statesmen, irrespective of section, Church, or party, couid assemble to av/aken and direct 
public sentiment in favor of enlarged National, State, and Church effort, for the education 
and elevation of our illiteiate and degraded masses. 

The Ocean Grove Association teudered the use of its auditorium, and offered to welcome 
as its guests all who should participate as speakers at these annual gatherings. The co- 
operation of the United States Commissioner of Education was readily secured, as was also 
that of the Corresponding Secretaries of the great Educational Societies, of the cliief re- 
ligious denominations of the country. 

The first National Education Assembly was held in 1882, and its success proved the 
wisdom of the movement. The Assembly of 1883 was organized upon a larger scale, with 
a broader range of subjects and more speakers. Three times a day for four days great 
audiences attended, and an enthusiastic interest was maintained to the end. This volume 
contains all the addresses delivered at the Assembly of 1883, and soaie of the more im- 
portant ones delivered in 1882. To add to its practical value, a large amount of statistical 
information is given from tiie census of 1880, and the National Bureau of Education, show- 
ing the ihiterate and educational status of the United States, each State and Territory, and 
of tiie South as a section. 

The addresses, in the main, are the words of workers, inspired by profound convictious 
and telling of results achieved in fields where they have spent years of sacrificing toil. The 
speakers, who hold official relations to the government or to the great denominations, have 
superintended the expenditure of many miUions among the ignorant and poor of our laud. 
Their information is trustworthy, and their words ought to have the greatest possible 
weight. Each speaker has spoken freely his own views, and the addresses are now printed 
as revised by their authors. 

The subjects discussed are among the most intensely practical and profoundly important 
before the American nation. The questions of education and ignorance, and their relations 
to individual, social, and national well-being, are at the front, and are there to stay. The 
American Republic must now decide whether intelligent morality or ignorant chicanery 
will rule at the bahot-box— the place of supreme power in the nation. Invincible there, 
tlie Republic lives ; defeated there, it dies. To educate and m.ike moral our illiterate masses 
—native and foreign, Negro and Indian— is not a benevolence work simply, but one involv- 
ing the very existence of the Nation, and the maintenance of every essential principle ou 
wiiich rests our Christian civilization. This volume contains a vast amount of information 
bearing upon many phases of this work, gathered by scholars and laborers from very wide 
fields of observation. 

The arrangement of the addresses under topics, freeing the body of the book from all 
details of proceedings, brings together the discussions on each subject. The full Table of 
Contents is supplemented by a copious and carefully prepared General Index. Mr. Henry 
F. Reddall, of New York city, has rendered valuable assistance in the editorial work. 

J. 0. H. 



I. EDUCATION AND MAN'S IMPROVEMENT. 



EDUCATION A MEASURE OF MAN'S IMPROVEMENT. 



BY HOK. JOHK EATON, LL.D., 
United States Commissioner of Education. 



MAN is confronted with two possibilities: 
he may become worse or better. Those 
looking on the sunset of life are apt to see 
the shadows of evil growing; but our day- 
accepts the idea that man has not only gone 
forward with time and the course of events, 
liere worse and there better, but that on the 
whole he has greater possibilities and is in 
better conditions. We agree with Whittier 
when he exclaims, 

"Take heart! The waster builds again. 

A charmed life old Goodness hath ; 
The tares may perish, but the grain 

Is not for death. 
Grod works in all things ; all obey 

His first propulsion from the night; 
Wake thou and watch I the world is gray 

With morning hght" 

The instinct of life in the animal is hardly 
more universal than the aspiration of man 
for improvement; individuals, families, soci- 
eties, churches, nations, races, seek for its 
measure. Every new scheme for the ameli- 
oration of man's condition, every ism or 
ology or reform, lays claim to attention on the 
ground of its power to improve human 
affairs. Great writers and orators have each 
advanced the claims of their favorite theme 
— industry, commerce, travel, poetry, history, 
philosophy, science, art, religion, education — 
each of these has performed its great part 
and deserves its eulogy. We disparage 
none ; but we may say that whatever com- 
merce, or industry, or philosophy, or religion, 
even, has accomplished, that only remains 
which has been wrought into man or his 
conditions by those processes of forming 
habits of thought or action, of growth, of 
nursing, or training, or instruction, which we 
call education. We may not pause to define 
this term, or lift it out of the crude notions 
that limit it to the book or the teacher, or 
that flatter every body with the idea that he 
knows all about it without attending to it, 



and is qualified and ready to assume its 
responsibilities whenever he has failed in 
every thing else. These are evils that must 
be cured by the onward march of culture. 

The power of education is so admitted in 
the best thinking of civilized nations in our 
day, that all men point to Sadowa and Sedan, 
those scenes of conflict and horrid war, and 
tell us lliat we find tiie cause of victory not 
alone in the bravery of the generals, not 
alone in the material of war, but in the edu- 
cation of the respective combatants. The 
nations of the earth, laden with the articles 
illustrative of their accomplishments, meet iu 
the great world's fairs in peaceful contest, 
and compare tlieir positions in the trades and 
industries, and the most considerate and 
thoughtful inquiry shows that not merely the 
investments iu commercial fleets, not merely 
the money invested or the numbers engaged in 
industries, but the skill taught in the schools, 
determines the supremacy of their articles in 
the markets of the world. Morever, inter- 
communication is so rapid and direct in spite 
of oceans and mountains, indeed of all nat- 
ural barriers and of all impediments imposed 
by nations, that every producer is brought 
into competition with every other, wherever 
he may live on the globe, and thus the qual- 
ity of each article determines its sale, and its 
quality is dependent upon the skill of the 
producer, and that skill upon his education. 
Thus commerce by its immutable laws daily 
enforces the lessons of these great contests 
of war and peace. 

The European nations most nearly affected 
by these contests consuming a large propor- 
tion of the products of their energj^, skill, 
and industry, iu keeping up great standing 
armies to preserve the peace, and trembling 
all the while lest the balance of power may 
somewhere be disturbed and involve them in 
destructive war, have been most profoundly 
affected by this emphatic and conclusive 
showing that education is the greatest power 
at their control and the final measure of the 



8 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



improvement of their people. The German 
States, led by Prussia, first made this discov- 
ery. To the selfishness of royalty it showed 
how their power could be multiplied by 
the cultivation of each of their subjects ; 
more children could be stronger and live 
longer, could think more and better, and 
direct the aifairs of peace and war more 
effectively. Training, though it waked up 
the powers of the youth, and rendered 
him liable to self action, was seen to be 
of so great possibilities that it could be 
conducive to habits of submission and 
devotion, and that the natural and acquired 
potentialities of the people would, in spite of 
this risk, be only more effective for the hand 
that ruled them. A king who could make 
every male subject of sufficient bodily health 
a soldier, and, by training a few for officers, 
could turn his whole country into a camp 
for a war of seven years, or a generation, as 
he chose, could, by a decree, send every 
child to school, and by training a few teach- 
ers, could mold his whole people to his will. 
Thus these rulers reached the enforcement 
of universal compulsory education and the 
establishment of normal schools for the 
training of teachers, and, as new necessities 
arose, they saw in education the power to 
meet them. Must ihey have more effective 
weapons of war, or implements of industry, 
or better roads and bridges ? the school must 
train the skilled men to make them. Was 
better or more clothing or food, or stricter 
economy, or greater care of health, needed? 
the schools must train the men to prepare 
the way and assure these results. But to 
the German reformers tliis power of educa- 
tion revealed a far higher purpose. The 
light which dawned upon them, gathering 
rays from all the past, had touclicd Italians 
and others, but produced the most effect in 
Germany. Her reformers saw that culture 
had been directed for the benefit of a few for 
man's selfish purposes in Church and State ; 
they and their followers in due time seemed 
to apprehend, in the universal application of 
the power of education, a figure of the imi- 
versal proclamation of salvation by the 
blood of the Saviour. Printing came to 
their aid with its almost miraculous multipli- 
cation of the power of thought. Education 
was to be universal for a higher end than 
the service of man. All men must have it, 
not to serve their generation alone, but to 
honor their God. If the king or his magis- 
trate, who was on all hands counted a serv- 
ant of heaven, could build roads or levy 
war, he could and should build school-houses, 
pay teachers, and educate the children that 
they might not grow up for their own de- 
struction and that of society, the State, and 
the Church. Out of the joint action of these 
diverse views came the elementary, second- 
ary, and superior education of Germany — 
her volk-schools, her gymnasia, and real 



schools, and her universities. Their results 
were greatest in those states that acted with 
William of Prussia, so that, when his 
armies, with 2^ per cent, of illiterates, met 
those of Austria with 17 per cent, of illiter- 
ates, other things being equal, there could be 
no doubt who would be the victor at Sadowa. 

Austria, of her twenty millions of people, 
had, in every ten thousand, one thousand 
in elementary schools, five in normal schools, 
twenty-eight in secondary schools, and five 
in universities, while Germany, of forty 
millions of people, had, in every ten thou- 
sand, fifteen hundred and ninety-four, or one 
half more, in elementary schools, one hun- 
dred and ten, or about three times the pro- 
portion of Austria, in her secondary schools, 
and about the same each in normal schools 
and universities. Austria, heeding this les- 
son, yielded to a liberal movement which 
culminated in the exhibition of 1873 at 
Vienna, gave greater attention to education, 
(even sending her soldiers to protect teach- 
ers in opening schools in certain mountain 
regions,) but never reached the point when 
there could be freedom of rehgious belief or 
declaration in her territory, and has finally 
yielded to a serious reaction. 

Many schools were established in France 
in the eighth century, and the great burst of 
light which so moved the Germans had also 
a most salutary effect upon the French ; but 
in the darkness of the St. Bartholomew mas- 
sacre that portion of her people who had 
felt its influence most was blotted out, or, at 
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, driven 
from their fair land, or crushed. With them 
departed much of skilled industry, many 
citizens of high character and enlightened 
religious zeal, and much of wise and liberal 
statesmanship, greatly needed then and ever 
since. How much France lost may be seen 
in part by wliat was gained in this and other 
lands from the Huguenots. What a tale of 
woes and wars at home and abroad remained 
for France I Every thing in the minds of the 
leaders of the period was tried for her im- 
provement but the sound and universal 
education of her people. Only that culture 
was attempted or allowed which was con- 
sistent with selfish or perverted schemes of 
Church or State. After the appalling scenes of 
the Revolution of 1793 they bethought them- 
selves more seriously of education for a mo- 
ment. Napoleon, in his days of supreme au- 
thority, as if knowing the power of education, 
tied its several parts up in one bundle and 
handled them for his own purposes through 
the head of the University of France. In 
the days of Cousin and Guizot, the former 
went to Germany to report on the progtess 
and condition of education, and united with 
the latter in efforts for the universal instruc- 
tion of the people. Look at the dark map 
of the illiteracy of France. In their day a 
dawning light appears in Paris and among 



EDUCATION' AND MAN'S IMPROVEMENT. 



tlie Yosges, gaining, against great odds, 
under the empire of Napoleon the Third, 
until the day for the end of his acting as 
ruler of the French, in the victory of the 
more cultured Germans at Sedan over his 
soldiers, of whom 36 per cent, were illiter- 
ate. 

The republic, coming into existence as a 
forlorn hope among scenes of the greatest 
confusion and suffering, at once rested its 
hopes for continuance on the education of 
the people. Step by step, taxes for educa- 
tion were increased, while the great burdens 
of the war were borne with alacrit3^ In- 
spection was more efficient; school-houses, 
teachers, and text-books were improved. 
Through the eminent Buisson commission at 
Vienna and Philadelpliia, and others, the 
progress of the world in education was 
brought under view for hints of possible im- 
provement. Tlie maternal schools so-called, 
dating back to the efforts of Oberlin, which 
received such aid from the consecrated 
labors of Madame Pape-Carpenl.ier — schools 
that are intended to save children from 
death and degradation, and give tliem 
habits of betterment before the school age — 
have been encouraged until they care for 
six hundred thousand inAmts. Attendance 
at school, during the school age, has been 
made compulsory, and linall}'- elementary 
schools, gratuitous or free. All education is 
emancipated from all control but that of the 
civil authority which directs it. A great 
scheme for secondary education for girls lias 
been introduced. If a new feature of edu- 
cation were to be inaugurated, with most 
logical precision the French have established 
normal schools to prepare teachers for the 
special work proposed. Attendance on the 
elementary and secondary schools has great- 
ly increased; instruciion in civic and moral 
duties is required by law. Soon youth, thus 
better tauglit, will bear their part as citizens. 
Freedom of conscience is declared, and the 
press and pulpit are less restricted in tlieir 
utterances. 

Monsieur Jules Ferry, in an address to 
the Society of Savants, March 31, 1883, 
showed that the republic in France liad re- 
duced illiteracy one per cent, per annum, 
while it had expended more than any pre- 
vious government for superior as well as 
elementary instruction. The superior schools 
that were found decaying had been revived ; 
sixty million francs had been spent in ten 
years in the work of construction alone, 
three fifths of the amount that would be 
necessary to place tliem on a level with 
schools of the same grade in neighboring 
countries. He also observed that, in a 
country like France,where birth no longer con- 
ferred privileges, and where wealth was dis- 
sipated almojit as soon as acquired, it was pre- 
eminently necessary for tlie state to assume 
the noble responsibilities that rank and 



wealth had imperfectly sustained, and that 
this duty was more imperative as the con- 
stitution became more democratic, so that 
the state should be not merely the adminis- 
trator, the police officer, tlie economist, but 
the teacher of high studies and the guardian 
of the ideal, amid the industrial competi- 
tions and social clianges of modern life. He 
also urged that attention to superior instruc- 
tion would go hand in hand with attention 
to primary and middle schools, and that a 
democrac_v having only primary schools, no 
matter how excellent, perfect, or imposing 
they were, would be a poor society and a 
poor democracy. 

Monsieur Duraux, in an address at the 
laying of the corner-stone for the " Lakanal " 
Lyceum at Sceaux, October 5, 1882, said 
that formerly the founding of a new city was 
the event most commemorated by festivities, 
inscriptions, and monuments, but that now 
the most engrossing and absorbing event, 
both in great cities and little villages, was 
the founding of a new school. It was be- 
coming acknowledged by all every-where 
that intelligence is the real ruler of the 
world; in a republic it was not enough to 
conquer liberty and fully retain it, but it was 
necessary to learn how to control its mani- 
festations and developments in harmony 
with all rights and interests ; to the schools 
we should look for this final achievement; 
tiirough the school each one is linked with 
others in the powerful association ol modern 
thought ; by the school only can we hope to 
control and finally end tlie agitation insep- 
arable from tlie achievement of freedom. 

England, early noted for her several great 
public sciioois for secondary instruction, and 
for her universities at Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, though holding the closest social, 
political, and civil relations with G-ermaiiy 
and France, was one of the last to learn the 
lesson of universal and adequate education, 
or to venture to give the control of instruc- 
tion to the civil administration. The story of 
her delay lias a sad moial for the instruction 
of English pride. Brougham first gained 
national reputation by his endeavors to 
arouse public attention to the ignorant and 
degraded condition of the masses. Only a 
commission of inquiry was the result in 
1816, followed by small grants, increased 
from year to year, to schools under the di- 
rection of Ciniich societies. Not a few 
Englishmen believe that the Elementary 
School Act of 1870 barely saved England 
from violent revolution. This act, not yet 
every-where in the highest degree operative, 
has been followed with results more signifi- 
cant and satisfactory tlian was anticipated 
by its friends. School attendance in six 
years went up 75 per cent, in London, the 
center of the most appalling ignorance and 
degradation, and crime and pauperism im- 
mediately showed signs of diminution. 



10 



CHRISTIAir EDTIGATORS IN COUNCIL. 



Scotland, that had been put in the very- 
front rank of education by the parish schools 
inaugurated by John Knox, found a new- 
forward step necessary, -while the school 
system of Ireland, if vigorously enforced, 
will remove many of the evils now traceable 
to ignorance. Mr. Mundella, who for three 
years has been the administrative officer of 
the Council of Education, in a recent speech 
says that there were only two hundred 
thousand enrolled in the public schools of 
tiie Kingdom before the act of 1870, and that 
now there are four million seven hundred 
thousand; and, referring to the question of 
religious teaching, which was made a great 
bugbear and occasion of assault by the 
ecclesiastical party that opposed its passage, 
he calls attention to the fact that he has 
recently been made president of the Sanday- 
School Union and can speak intelligently 
from observauou on both sides, and he de- 
clares that but one case of complaint has 
been made in the London Board schools 
■which he had specially observed, and, in 
that case, the father and mother were not 
agreed; and he quotes approvingly Mr. 
Fountain Hartley, the great English autliori- 
ty in Sunday-school matters, who declares 
that, throughout the country, the increase of 
day-school education has had a most bene- 
ficial influence upon Sunday-schools. No 
scholars come to school better fitted to re- 
ceive scriptural instruction, and the teachers, 
knowing the efficiency of the day-school 
teachers, are stimulated to increased efforts 
toward self-improvement and careful prep- 
aration. 

Some of the colonies, like those of Aus- 
tralia and Victoria, -were in advance of tlie 
mother country, having their public-school 
systems, universities, and libraries, enabling 
their population, though far removed from 
the centers of civilization, to keep step with 
the most rapid advances of the age. 

Americans well know the lack of educa- 
tion in the province of Quebec and the back- 
-warduess of its people, while Ontario, under 
the lead of the eminent Dr. Ryerson, sought, 
tlie world over, the best things in education 
for its youth, and its scheme of instruction 
■will not suffer by comparison of methods 
and appliances with any portion of the 
world. Its normal school is belter furnished 
with aids than any other on our continent. 

Some of the more backward colonies have 
received new impulse in education since the 
action of the mother country, and now we 
have the report of the school systems of 
Cape Colony and the calendar of iis univer- 
sity. Even Malta :s supplied with a school 
system, to restore, if possible, the lost vitality 
of its native population. Unfortunately, at 
the date of the emancipation of the slaves 
in the English colonies, the condition of 
education at home was most deplorable and 
the conceptions of its power to uplifc man 



were most imperfect, and, after the slaves 
were set free, little was done save by limited 
Church influence to educate and prepare 
them for their new condition in life. As a 
consequence, their progress since, either in 
thrift, manhood, or religion, has been most 
unsatisfactory. In confirmation of this state- 
ment it is enough to name the fact that very 
competent and trustworthy authority, in dis- 
closing the deplorable condition of the 
negroes in Jamaica, informs us that 60 per 
cent, are born out of wedlock. 

India, that vast English dependency, is 
chiefly known to Americans as a missionary 
field, but the home country for a long time 
has acknowledged the obligations of public 
education. But up to the time of the Sepoy 
rebellion the administration of instruction, 
while declaring the freedom of conscience, 
only respected the sentiments of the natives. 
It carried this so far tliat neither text-books 
nor teachers were allowed except those in 
accord with the doctrines of the Brahmin, 
the Mohammedan, or the Parsee. There 
was no freedom for the Christiai] teacher or 
Christian text-book. But after tlie stormy 
and appalling horrors and cruelty of the Se- 
poy rebellion were past, and an account was 
taken of those who had participated in it, it 
was found that a very large number of them 
were trained in these government schools, 
and that less than lialf-a-dozen could be 
definitely traced who had ever liad any con- 
nection -^ath the Christian schools of the 
missionaries. This lesson, together with the 
additional attention to education at home, 
led to an advance step. A teacher or text- 
book could be Christian, though no efforts of 
propagandism were allowed. 

But greater progress is noted: I invite 
your attention to some figures for 1881 ; first, 
to those indicating the extent to which peo- 
ple avail themselves of the provision for su- 
perior instruction. The total number pre- 
sented for tlie university examinations in the 
universities of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras 
was 6,810, of whom 2,984 passed, including 
one girl. The total number that completed 
courses and offered tliemselves for gradua- 
tion in art sciiools and professional schools 
was 2,799, of whom 1,196 passed. From the 
official reports on public instruction in nine 
provinces and two native states, having a 
population in all of 201,064,016, we learn 
that on March 31, 1881, the number of stu- 
dents in colleges of the arts was 5,620 ; in 
colleges for professional trades, 1,497; in 
schools for technical or special training, 19,- 
847 ; in secondary schools for boys, 260,854; 
for girls, 14,486. In Bengal or Bombay, 
where secondary instruction is most widely 
diffused, it is estimated that the ratio of boys 
in the high-schools to the whole population 
is for the former one to five thousand, for the 
latter one to fourteen hundred. In middle 
schools the estimates are respectively one to 



EDUCATION AND MANS IMPROVEMENT. 



11 



sixteen hundred aud sixty-six, and one to 
one thousand. 

The primary schools in the nine provinces 
and two states mentioned, including lliose 
aided and those unaided by the government, 
but under inspection, had a total enrolhnenc 
of 1,880,345, namelj^, 1,*784,988 boj^s and 
10.'5,357 girls. The total government ex- 
penditure for primary schools was 2,238,797 
rupees, or $873,130 93. The current reports 
call attention to the growing interest in edu- 
cation in the rural districts and among the 
Mohammedan population, the tendency to 
multiply schools for girls, and the steady in- 
crease in the number of indigenous schools 
brought under government inspection. With 
all that has been accomplished, however, it 
is estimated that upward of twenty-five 
millions of cBildren needing primary educa- 
tion are uucared for, and such is the urgent 
need of extending elementary education 
among the masses of India that an educa- 
tional commission has been appointed to 
take testimony in the matter and to devise 
practical measures for meeting the demand. 
The total number of scholars reported in all 
the schools of the nine provinces and two 
'.native states before mentioned is 2.190,197, 
of whom 206,832, or a little over nine per 
cent., were studying Engli-^h. 

John Bright, in his recent inaugural on 
the occasion of his installation last March 
as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, 
predicted the inevitable consequences of thu 
education which is fostered under English 
rule in India as follows: 

" English literature, as a matter of course 
wliere the English language is spoken, and 
English science — I mean science such as it 
appears in English books — will there find 
students, and with regard to religion, if we 
do little or nothing to spread among the na- 
tives of India the religion which we hold to 
be true, of this we may be well assured, 
that the English language and English liter- 
ature and English science must necessarily 
break down the ancient superstitions and re- 
ligions of the Indian people. If this be so, 
we may come to the certain conclusion that 
there will grow up in the minds of the na- 
tives of India the most educated and the 
most cultivated feelings in favor of change 
and of freedom. In fact, all the good that 
we are endeavoring to do — and it is more 
than we have endeavored to do in past j'ears 
— all the good that we endeavor to do by 
education, by improved legislation, every 
thing that tends to lift the native a little 
higher, every tiling of that kind necessarily 
must tend to give his mind feelings which, 
some time or other, will be hostile to the per- 
manent subjection of his country to another 
country. As one of the consequences of the 
hitroduction of universal learning into India, 
native scholars are prepared lo discuss social 
problems from the Indian stand-point, aud to 



support their views by the logic, the ethical 
conceptions, and the understanding of affairs 
which pass current in Europe." 

Coming back to smaller European govern- 
ments for studies illustrative of our theme, 
we observe that Belgium since iis foundation 
has acted upon a scheme of education with 
many excellent features. Of her five and a 
half millions of population one thousand two 
hundred and seventy in every ten thousand 
are in elementary schools, five in normal 
schools, thirty-four in secondary schools, and 
seven in universities. Yet not far from 50 
per cent, of those entering the military serv- 
ice are illiterate. The people and the gov- 
ernment, dissatisfied with the results of the 
past, believing that ecclesiastical control of 
education has been injurious to its efBciency, 
are in the midst of a severe confiict, atteiupt- 
hig to give civil control to the administration. 

Denmark, of her two millions of people, 
has one thousand one hundred and ninety-five 
in every ten thousand in elementary schools, 
one in normal schools, fifteen in secondary 
schools, and six in universities: and about 
one fifth of her population has no knowledge 
of reading and writing. 

The Netherlands, of her four millions, has 
one thousand three hundred and thirt}'' in 
every ten thousand in elementary schools, 
one in normal schools, seventeen in secondary 
schools, and four in universities. 

Norway and Sweden, from which the 
United States receive a population of great 
promise, in their northern comparative isola- 
tion might be conjectured by those not well 
informed to be benind in education, but how- 
ever slow their progress at times, now they 
are well to tlie front, about ninety-seven in 
a hundred of children of schoolage being un- 
der instruction ; their universities and higher 
special schools are well attended and of a 
liigh order. They have a device called am- 
btdatory schools, for sparsely settled regions, 
which might be imitated in parts of our own 
country. They aim to have all taught, and 
that by good teachers, and when the people 
live remote from eacii other four school 
houses are erected, say in a territory six 
miles square, so near ttie respective corners 
that all will be within attending distance at 
least one of the four terms in the year, and 
the teacher, who is continuously employed 
and who is thus paid to be well qualified, 
teaches one term in each house, and so the 
school travels about for the accommodation 
of the young, who are compelled to be pres- 
ent one term, wiiile any who can may attend 
all the year. The present king, when he 
came to the throne, wishing to show his de- 
sire to benefit his people, selected certain ap- 
paratus in physics and chemistry, and fur- 
nished tliem to a class of schools; and for 
those schools in barren sections, where the 
culture and manufacture of the willow is a 
main source of support, he prepared and fur- 



12 



CHBISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



nished the schools a cabinet of apparatus 
used in cultivating the willow and making it 
into wicker work, in order that while llie 
cliildren learned their letters iiiej might gain 
sometliiiig of the skill by which they are to 
support themselves. It may be mentioned 
as a circumstance of interest to Americans 
that the present advancement of education 
is due very much to the visit to this country 
of Mr. P. A. Siljestrom, an eminent Swedish 
gentleman sent thirty years ago at the ex- 
pense of his government to study our political 
questions, but he became interested in our 
education more than all else, and on his re- 
turn published a stirring account of the in- 
fluence and popularity of our schools, con- 
fessing that he was more affected by our 
crusade against dilapidated school-houses, 
against inefficient school-masters and faulty 
methods of instruction, than by many of the 
enterprises that are most highly lauded in 
history, and that to such a nation no diffi- 
culties, no dangers, are insuperable. But a 
recent Swedish writer, gathering up the 
figures which underlie the dark picture of 
our illiterates, and our lack of schools for 
their instruction, believes we have already 
met a difficulty too great for us to overcome. 

Norway has fourteen hundred and forty- 
three in every ten tliousand in elementary 
scliools, and Sweden thirteen hundred and 
thirty-four; Switzerland, fifteen hundred and 
forty-two, but, like Germany, Switzeiland 
shows a high average of education in her 
middle classes by her one hundred and 
twelve in every ten tliousand in secondary 
schools. 

Spain has of her seventeen million people 
only eight hundred and sixty in her element- 
ary schools; Portugal, her neighbor on the 
peninsula,onlyfour hundred and seventy-three 
in ten thousand; but the restrictions of ec- 
clesiasticism cast a deep shadow over all the 
work of education, yet not a few progressive 
minds in each country, catching the spirit of 
the age, are beginning to move with great 
earnestness for the improvement of educa- 
tion in all its grades and departments. 

The story of education in Italy taken up 
in its completeness has the interest of a 
thrilling romance. Visitors from every na- 
tion are familiar with the beggarly condition 
of her masses for centuries; her universities 
educated mainly those intended for the 
priesthood and the service of the state, and 
occasionally produced an eminent specialist. 
It is impossible for us to go back to the dis- 
tracted condition of the diverse states and 
point out in detail recent progress, which, 
beginning in Sardinia, has taken efi'ect 
tliroughout united Italy, so that, of lier twen- 
ty-eight millions, there are now seven hundred 
and twenty-eight in ten thousand in element- 
ary schools, on the average one and a lialf 
in normal schools, five in secondary schools, 
and three in universities. To none more than 



to Cavour, fitly called the Regenerator of Italy, 
and one of tiie greatest of modern statesmen, 
is d\ie the great changes in instruction which 
have told so favoral^ly upon ilie Italians. Dur- 
ing ten years, in which tiie statistics are toler- 
abi}^ accurate and trustworthy, it appears that 
illiterac}' diminished about one per cent, an- 
nually. Cavour's treatment of the question 
pointed to his superiority over Napoleon, who 
sliowed an equally keen perception of the 
power of education, but was disposed to de- 
stroj- that wliich he could not control — a 
conspicuous illustration of which remains in 
Italy. Wlien his conquering armies readied 
Bologna, the seat of the oldest European 
university then in existence, where thou- 
sands of the most eminent of European 
scholars, statesmen, orators, scientists, poets, 
and philosophers had been educated, and 
found that he could not warp and wield its 
power at will, he laid his destroying hand 
upon it and annihilated it. Cavour, though 
he found the universities the centers of su- 
perstitions and ecclesiasticisms that would 
thwart the regeneration of Italy, left them 
to pursue their course, but bent his efforts 
for education toward the increase of the ef- 
ficiency of elementary instruction and the 
establishment of industrial scliools which 
should render the skill of the common la- 
borer more productive, and of the higher 
technical schools from which there should 
come up men thoroughly prepared by the 
most scientific training to defend and admin- 
ister to united Italy. Nine of these scliools 
are still reported. In the one at Turin ap- 
pears a striking incident of far-sightedness. 
It is well known how much land was useless 
for cultivation, either b^' its being too dry or 
by its being marsh}^ and filled with water. 
Into the grounds of this institution waters 
were brought from a neighboring stream, and 
illustrations furnished the young students, 
on the one hand of the piinciples of irriga- 
tion, and on the other of drainage, by appli- 
cation of which vast barren regions were 
made productive, and thus the food-produc- 
ing power of the country greatly increased. 

Freedom of conscience is greater than 
ever. There are promises of a liberty more 
salutary and beneficial than was ever known 
in the days of the ancient republic, in which 
a new life shall come to enjoy and improve 
the remains of the architecture, sculpture, 
and memories of that Rome which once 
ruled the world from her seven hills. 

Hungary, joined to Austria under Kaiser 
Joseph, has made substantially the same 
progress in education, but a large and in- 
creasing class is seeking for her schools 
eveiy improvement. 

The principalities lying along her borders 
have been foot-balls of contest between Rus- 
sia and Turkey. Having many physical ele- 
ments of progress they have hardly yet suf- 
ficient education among tlieir peoples to 



BDUGATION' AND MAN'S IMPROVEMENT. 



13 



undertake a direct and far-reaching line of 
advancement. 

Greoce, where Herodotus lived, vrhence 
lie went forth so widely to gain knowledge 
of mankind and prepare the records which 
should fairly give him the title of " the 
father of history," wliere Homer sang for 
his own and all coming generations, where 
L>'curgus and Solon laid the enduring foun- 
dations of cities, where art and oratory 
reached some of their higliest triumpiis, 
where the growth of philosophy produced a 
Socrates who taught Plato and Aristotle, 
both to remain the instructors of mankind, 
the latter the personal teacher of Alexander 
the Great, who went forth from this land 
thus taught to conquer the world, and by 
his wise dissemination of the results of Gre- 
cian civilizatiou to liberate also and advance 
mankind in preparation for the dawn of the 
Christian era. So much of this historic laud 
as is now known as the kingdom of Greece 
has a university, a polytechnic school, and is 
struggling, under great embarrassmeuts, to 
extend among the people elementary educa- 
tion. 

Finland, tliough a dependency, has its uni- 
versity, normal school, and a fair number of 
elementary sciiools of excellent character. 

The Finns sent a commission to this coun- 
try to study our schools, and are now discuss- 
ing some of the most advanced problems, 
among which is the adoption of co-education 
of the sexes, in reference to whicli they have 
called on tliis country for its experience. 

Approaching Russia, and remembering how 
Peter the Great, seeking to improve liis peo- 
ple, went abroad to educate himself in the 
learning, arts, and trades of more advanced 
civilizations, one would naturally expect to 
see some adequate and effective illustration 
and appreciation of the power of education, 
but, alas I in the district of Kostroma over 
ninety per cent, of the children have no edu- 
cation. Other districts do slightly better, 
but the city of Moscow sends only twelve 
per cent, of her children to school, and St. 
Petersburg, forty-one per cent. Out of the 
population of seveniy-eiglit and a half mill- 
ions in Russia only one lumdred and tifty- 
one in ten thousand attend elementnry 
sciiools, four normal schools, seven second- 
ary schools, and eigiit universities. Wiiat 
wonder that Niliilism and its horrors liave 
here their iiome! That portion of the pop- 
ulation declared free from serfdom by Alex- 
ander has experienced little change, and has 
made the slightest possible progress on ac- 
count of the absence of education ; yet we 
should remember that some of the institu- 
tions established for specini instruction and 
the universities and professional schools are 
among the rarest and best of the age, and 
women in some instances are admitted to uU 
their advantages; but the tyranny of admin- 
istratiou permits no freedom of elementary 



education, the press is muzzled, neither news- 
papers nor books can be circulated with 
freedom, a meeting of teachers cannot be 
called without special permission, but tlie 
Bible is permitted to have some measure of 
circulation, and the Stundists, as they are 
called, are now organizing and bind tliem- 
selves, like some unions of Ciirislian people 
else where, to devote an hour a day to the study 
of tlie Bible. "Whole villages have thus been 
touched as by a magic power; drunkards 
have been saved, and criminals have forsaken 
their evil ways, and those who have been 
inspired by this new course to pursue a nobler 
li[e have now set themselves to win others. 

You have already indulged me in the use 
of so many figures as the briefest way to 
treat these data that I hesitate to go further, 
and yet I am sure j-on will not permit me to 
leave this view of Europe without presenting 
in summary some figures comparing the 
war expenditures in these countries with 
tiiose for education. Tlie statement is pre- 
pared by Leon Donnat, a learned Belgian, 
and is believed to be substantially correct, 
and shows the amount each citizen pays for 
war purposes and for education, from two 
times to seventy-six times as much: 



COUNTBT. 


For war. 
Francs. 


For education 
Francs. 


Italy 
Switzerland 


9.05 
5.80 


0.80 
5.00 


Denmark 


10.40 


5.50 


Saxouy 
Holland 


14.15 
21.30 


4.00 
3.80 


England 


22.25 


3.75 


Bavaria 


14.15 


3.00 


Prussia 


13.15 


2.90 


Belgium 

Wurtemburg 

Austria 


8.10 
14.15 

8.00 


2.75 
2.10 
1.96 


France 


25.85 


1.85 


Russia 


12.23 


0.16 



Turkey, controlling in a semi-civilized ad- 
ministration what remains of the territory 
subject to tlie Moslem faith, which once gave 
such an impulse to activity of thought, and 
carried so far to the front the standards of 
aritlunetic, algebra, chemistry, and architect- 
ure, now promotes the least possible of any 
form of uplifting learning, and is so weak- 
ened by the ignorance and degradation of the 
masses as to be known as the " sick man " 
among the nations. 

The education of Cliina confirms with em- 
phasis the sentiment of our theme. A large 
share of her people taught in the books of 
Confucius, having no proper sense of religion, 
little knowledge of mathematics and physics, 
superstitiously afraid of medicine, though all 
expect their promotion through their attain- 
ments in learning, save in the line of royalty 
and military activity, and though long in 
possession of some of tlae most valuable 
inventions of mankind, yet this people, num- 



14 



CHRISTIAir EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



bering more than any other nation populating 
a single country, present an absence of im- 
provement tliat appears lil<e the monotony of 
a dead level in human affairs. 

Wliat shall we say of Japan, possessing 
maritime and commercial possibiHties like 
those of Great Britain, so long isolated from 
manliind and shut up to herself, yet, when 
opening her gates, receiving the most ad- 
vanced civiUzation, and making education 
pre-eminently the agent of future progress ? 
Her territory is divided into districts for 
universal education and for the establish- 
ment of secondary schools, crowned with the 
university; normal schools for the training 
of teachers are made a specialty; her com- 
missioners and teachers are sent the world 
over to find the best methods, text-books, 
and appliances; an extensive pedagogical 
museum is established at her capital where 
teachers and educators can see and study im- 
provements in architecture, furniiure, books, 
and other appliances for school use. Already 
six hundred and sixty in ten thousand are in 
lier elementary scliools, two in her normal 
schools, six in secondary schools, and three 
in universities. Wishing to establish three 
additional special schools, one for business, 
one for general industries, and one for agri- 
culture, she sends abroad to secure the best 
hints that can be afforded. No country has 
more effectually illustrated the sentiment of 
an eminent German, What you would have 
yonr people, that put in your schools. 

Africa, touched only here and there bj'' the 
light of modern civilization, presents one 
vast dark expanse, not relieved even, as in 
ancient times, by tiie learning of Egypt, so 
instructive in the ruins of its pyramids and 
monuments, cities and catacombs, that learn- 
ing of the Pharaohs in all of which Moses 
was taught to prepare him to become the 
miraculous deliverer of his brethren, and to 
leave them that code of laws, those personal 
habits, tliose customs of society, the family. 
Church and State which, wrought into them 
and their condition by every process of edu- 
cation, should render them a peculiar people. 
It is a striking illustration of the power of 
education carried on for generations, and 
should not be forgotten here, line upon line, 
precept upon precept, here a little and there 
a little, at home and by the way, in every 
circumstance in which jjarent or society or 
Church or State can mold or shape the nature 
and character of childhood, so that while 
there is no evidence that the natural pecul- 
iarities of Abraham were any greater or 
more marked than those of the other peoples 
with whom he was associated, yet these 
other nations have communicated nothing to 
their descendants by wliich they can be dis- 
tinguished, but the sou of Abraliam is known 
by his appearance as well as by certain char- 
acteristics, customs, and ideas wherever met. 

Crossing the ocean to the American con- 



tinent we find in the States of South Ameri- 
ca at the present date among the leaders an 
acknowledgment of the principles of tho 
power of education, but their inadequate ap- 
plication. Tliey obtain teachers from the 
United States, and would take more aud 
would have larger commercial dealings with 
us if more of our youth were taught Portu- 
guese and Spanisli. Prof. Gould, who has 
made so renowned the observatory of the 
Argentine Republic by his work upon the 
stars of the southern hemisphere, is from 
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Brazil is ju^t 
now holding a congress of education, at 
which there is an exhibition of educational 
appliances, drawn largely from the United 
States. Her worthy emperor is active in 
every way to promote the progress of his 
diversified people, and recently, in view of 
increasing the demand for education among 
the negroes as slavery passes away, has had 
the education of our blacks studied and re- 
ported. Brazil has one hundred and fifty-.-iix: 
in ten thousand of her population in element- 
ary schools, and gives great attention to her 
university, principal library, and certain 
special forms of instruction. 

In the Argentine Republic only about five 
per cent, of the population are found in 
schools, and the efforts lor advanced instruc- 
tion are only partially successful ; her uni- 
versity instruction has one thousand four 
hundred and ninety-five students. 

Chili, of her two millions of people, has, in 
each ten thousand, three iutndred and nine in 
elementary schools, twenty in secondary 
schools, and four in universities, and has 
sixty thousand vohmies in her national 
library. A large body of her enterpi'ising 
citizens are urging greater activity in belialf 
of the education of the masses, and just now 
her president has recommended the separa- 
tion of Church and State. 

In the United States of Colombia and the 
states of Central America the ups and downs 
of social order permit no systematic or steady 
progress in education, but continual attempts 
are made to introduce the improved notions 
of instruction; here tliey succeed in ele- 
mentary schools, there in normal schools, 
and agaiia in the medical college. The prin- 
ciples of administeiing education by tlie 
state made universal and eftective for all its 
children, opening up the highest opportuni- 
ties for those of the lowest bu'th, is gaining 
ground in all the states of South and Central 
America. Mexico is thoroughly committed 
to this principle by its constitution and ad- 
ministration, yet can only make slow prog- 
ress in bringing systematic education to her 
people out of the confusion, bigotry, and 
degradation of the past; but, of her ten 
millions of people, she is able to report three 
hundred and seventy-three in ten thousand 
in her elementary schools, and seventeen 
under secondary instruction. 



EDUCATION AND MANS IMPROVEMENT 



15 



Bringing our own country into this gen- 
eral review, of our fifty millions, one thousand 
nine hundred and thirty-nine in ten thousand 
are in elementary schools, five in normal 
schools, and forty in secondary schools. 

It is impossible to canvass here the vast 
human experience found in ancient history 
in support of our proposition. 

In this glance around the educational hori- 
zon, in which much lias come into view that 
it is impossible to state, while we gain a 
measure of man's progress we are 

I. Appalled at the improvement that re- 
mains for him to mal<e. The great masses 
of manl\ind are untouched by the faintest 
gleam of advancing light, and the mosc ad- 
vanced nations have vast necessities unmet 
and vast opportunities unimproved. 

II. We see how the quality of education 
determines the quality of man's improvement, 
especially iiovv dependent its results are upon 
freedom of person, freedom of conscience, of 
thought, of action. 

III. We observe how public systems of 
education are in the nature of civil affairs, 
and we see how the Church fails when it 
undertakes to administer tliera as it does 
when it assumes to direct any other duties 
of the state. We are more than ever con- 
vinced that the Church furnishes the highest 
motives to human action by its teachin.siS ; it 
would make the body of man a temple for 
the indwelling of the Divine Spirit; it would 
consecrate the intellect to the highest pur- 
poses ; but the Ctiurch, the organization 
through which these blessings are to be 
transmitted, is neither the family nor the 
state, but fundamentally apart from each, 
and must exert its power over them not by 
force, not through the forms of civil law, but 
after the manner of the Divine Spirit, teach- 
ing all men and by its all-pervading doctrines 
arousing within every man the latent possi- 
bilities of his soul, and through these ap- 
pointed methods so influencing each indi- 
vidual that the family and state shall alike 
be ordered in conformity to its precepts. 

lY. We discover how the efficiency of the 
pulpit must depend on the extent with which 
its efforts accord witli the principles of edu- 
cation, and that its loss of power is due in 
part to the extent to which it has devoted 
itself to preaching, technically so-called, in 
distuiction from educating and inscructing 
the people in divine things. It must preach, 
but it must also, following its Great Head, 
teach all men. 

V. In recognition of education as a meas- 
ure of man's improvement, Sabbath-schools 
have been estabUshed and tlieir great work 
extended around the globe, having a total 
attendance of 14,184,880. 

VI. We observe that the final effect of all 
great moral movements, like those of Luther 
and Wesley, is determined by their educat- 
ing power. 



VII. It brings into striking contrast the 
methods of the early missions of tnodern 
times with those of the nineteenth century. 
The earlier missions, characterized by great 
self-abnegation and most triumphant heroism, 
did indeed bestow efforts upon childliood, 
but they emploj^ed the great principles of 
education not so much for improving the 
mind, or regenerating the life, or in awaken- 
ing the reason, as for forming habits of 
thought and action and impressing beliefs 
and observances that might remahi, while 
little regard was had to the strict moral and 
spiritual duties imposed by Christianity. 
But the representative of the new spirit of 
missions meets at a vantage all comers from 
other conditions of life. He seeks to imitate 
the Great Master in the skillful adaptations 
of his efforts to the conditions around him; 
he teaches all men; he feeds the lambs. 
The work is not satisfactory in any individ- 
ual till his spiritual life is renovated and the 
whole man consecrated to the divine service 
and he lives a new life. The improvement 
of mankind through missionary labors is 
measured by the education of the people in 
countries affected by these Christian influ- 
ences. Christianity is the warmth that 
raises the column of humanity, and the 
number of schools planted and pupils edu- 
cated measures its height. The number of 
communicants at foreign mission churches 
out:side of Europe and British America in- 
creased three and a half times from 1850 to 
1880; the number of pupils increased three 
times in the same period. Throwing out a 
few countries having public schools, the ratio 
of increase of communicants and pupils 
would be almost identical. In India, where 
Lord Lawrence said that missionaries had 
done more for its benefit than all other 
agencies combined, the pupils in their schools 
have increased almost as rapidly as their 
Church members, notwithstanding the ex- 
istence of government schools. The same is 
true of Burmah and Siam. These tliree coun- 
tries had in 1880 more than one hundred 
ihousand communicants, and one hundred 
and forty thousand pupils in missionary 
schools. In Oceanica the communicants 
have increased from fifty-nine thousand to 
one hundred and twenty-eight thousand in 
thirty years; pupils, from thirty-one thou- 
sand to seventy-five thousand. Here the 
ratios are almost identical, (2.6 and 2.4.) 
There are nine thousand three hundred mis- 
sion schools attended by four hundred and 
forty-eight thousand pupils, now maintained 
by seventy foreign missionary societies. 
Nearly all of these schools are in Asia, 
(4,'.'65,) Africa, (1.696,) and Oceanica, (2,522.) 
Over one-seventh of them are sustained by 
the churches of the United States. 

When missionary achievements are re- 
counted the elevation of people from igno- 
rance is emphasized. Sir Baitle Frere testi- 



16 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS m COUNCIL. 



fies that Christianity is effecting extensive 
and rapid changes, morally, socially, and 
politically. Mr. Robert Mackenzie finds 
among the results of missions in South Africa 
that " Education is rapidly extending." Not 
only have schools been established by mis- 
sionaries, but text-books have been provided 
for students and men of science. To the 
Chinese " Dr. Hobson has given works on 
physiology, surgery, medicine, chemistry, 
and natural philosophy; Mr. Wylie, Euclid, 
algebra, arithmetic, geometry, calculus, 
Herschel's large astronomy, and Newton's 
Principia; Mr. Edkins, Whewell's Mechanics 
and works on Western literature ; Mr. Muir- 
head, English history and universal geo- 
graphy; Dr. Bridgeman, an illustrated his- 
tory of the United States; Dr. Martin, 
Wheaton's International Law, and illustrated 
volumes on chemistry, natural philosophy, 
etc. The mission presses in India are 25 in 
number. During the years between 1852 
and 1862 they issued 1,634,940 copies of tiie 
Scriptures, chiefly single books, and 8,604,- 
033 tracts, school-books, and books for gen- 
eral circulation. During the ten years 
between 1862 and 1872 they issued 3,410 
new works, in 30 languages, and circulated 
1,315,503 copies of books of Scripture, 
2,375,040 school-books, and 8,750,129 Cliris- 
tian books and tracts." 

The conversion of the Sandwich Islanders, 
their transformation from the customs and 
laws and degradations of pagan life to those 
in conformity with Christianity, is a striking 
illustration of the purpose and accomplish- 
ments of our modern missions, and the con- 
trast may be further followed to advantage 
by tracing the early heroic endeavors in 
Africa, China, and among the aborigines of 
our own continent, and comparing them with 
surer results of the present day. In the 
light of the hour to the stranger it is one of 
the marvels that the United States have only 
just now come to treat adequately the long- 
disturbing Indian question. 

YIII. We may learn from this survey that 
whatever evils we propose to remove from 
among men the one compreliensive means is 
education. If we would civilize the wild 
Indian, we must educate his child in the 
fittest and fullest significance of that term. 
If we would remove Mormonism, we must 



educate its youth in a more liberal spirit. If 
we would uplift the former slaves in our 
midst, we must establish schools among 
them for universal instruction. If we would 
guard our land from the perils threatened by 
misused capital and disorganized labor or 
destructive communism, we must use the 
utmost power of education to bring every 
child up with a sound mind in a sound body 
with all powers trained for honest dealing 
and high endeavor. 

IX. The extent to which the English 
language is used in this progress of educa- 
tion gives great encouragement to all efforts 
for human improvement; through that 
language the advance in one country in edu- 
caiion, science, or art, or literature, may be 
readily communicated to all others. Every 
thought, every feeling, may easily encircle 
the globe. Most eloquently does Joseph 
Cook say, after his trip around the world, 
during which he discussed substantially the 
same great subjects to large audiences in 
Europe, Asia, and the islands of the sea: 

" As the growth of civilization brings us 
into contact with the ends of the earth, we 
should feel that we cannot cut ourselves off 
from the other side of the globe, that 
humanity is a unit, commercially, scientific- 
ally, socially, industrially, almost politically, 
to-day. In onr time there are no foreign 
lands. Communication is so swift between 
country and country that no shores are dis- 
tant. There can be no hermit nations ; no 
people can live behind a screen. The mental 
seclusion of false faiths must be broken up. 
The light of the Occident cannot be hidden 
from the Orient." 

X. Consideration of these facts prompts 
us to agree with the feelings of the Hebrews 
in reference to the teacher as shown in their 
traditions and in many passages of the Tal- 
mud. In one of these they tell how once in 
a great drought their greatest rabbis prayed 
and wept for rain and the rain came not, 
and at last a common-looking person got up 
and prayed to Him who causes the wind to 
blow and the rain to descend, and instantly 
the heavens began to cover themselves with 
clouds and the rain began to fall. " Who art 
thou," they cried, " whose prayers have 
alone prevailed?'' and he answered, "I am 
a teacher of little children." 



II. ILLITERACY IM THE UNITED STATES. 



1. ADDRESS. 



KEV, HEEEICK JOHNSON, D. D., OP CHICAGO. 



As presiding officer at the third session Rev. Dr. Johnson spoke as 
follows: 



MY office to-night is that of introduction. 
The chief and conspicuous excellence of 
an introduction is its brevity, and I shall 
therefore undertake to put that excellence 
into the introductions of to-niglit. We have 
come, in my judgment, to a topic that should 
concern and tax the best statesmanship of 
our time. It stands related to all the other 
topics in that it embraces them all. If we 
are to reach a solution of the Indian problem, 
or the Negro problem, or the Chinese prob- 
lem, or the poor-white problem, we shall do 
it most effectually and simply by reaching 
the solution of tliis problem of the illiterate 
masses; for when we have solved this we 
have solved all the rest. Illiteracy and the 
illiterate are bad enough ; masses of the il- 
literate, or " the illiterate masses," are inex- 
pressibly bad, and this badness reaches its 
utmost intensity when these illiterate masses 
are under a free government like ours. Un- 
der despotisms illiterate masses may be well 
enough, for ignorance is the prop of despot- 
ism ; ignorance, not in the despotism, but in 
the tools which despotism puts to use. And 
tools are things that have no rights, no du- 
ties, no responsibilities. They ought to be 
illiterate — intelligence is not to be mentioned 
in connection with tiiem. Therefore the 
nias«es in despotisms go in droves, move in 
fixed grooves, are simply material to be used 
ui wars. 

But our government is " a government of 
the people, by the people, for the people;" 
the sovereign is each individual ; the people 
is king. "Woe to thee, law, when thy king 
is a child. Wisdom and knowledge must 
characterize the governing power. And as 
here the masses rule, intelligence must per- 
vade tiie masses. The standing peril is prev- 



alent illiteracy. Take it in connection with 
the ballot-box: winging a ballot is very much 
like winging a bullet. It needs intelligence, 
aim, and knowledge of the situation. As the 
rifles that think carry the fartliest and surest, 
so the ballots that think effect the best and 
widest results. And imiversal suffrage is 
here. Whether for good or ill, we are in for 
it. But it is not simply in coimection with 
the ballot that we are to guard against illit- 
eracy. It is in connection with the shop and 
the farm, and with honest labor of any sort 
anywhere. 

One of the chief reproaches and disgraces 
of manhood is machine-work — that is, work 
with no intelligence at the helm — and there- 
fore no improvement in methods, and no pos- 
sibilities of change; the eternal see-saw of 
mere mechanical contrivance. If you would 
elevate labor, j^ou must educate the laborer. 
If you would enhance the value of citizen- 
ship, you must make intelligent citizens. If 
you would take brawn out of the category of 
the merely animal ai'd mechanical, you must 
put brain into the brawn. ISTot that the 
brain is to do brawn's work. The brain 
was made to do thinking, not to saw wood 
or make shoes. But the point is, that just 
as intelligence gets behind the saw and the 
hammer, we shall have better saws and bet- 
ter shoes. When brain guides the plow and 
gets mixed with the soil, a better furrow 
will be turned on the old farm. 

Let us to-night got increased and profound 
convictions of the importance of solving this 
problem in connection with our illiterate 
masses. We have these masses, and they 
are citizens ; and it is the duty of the hour 
for the statesmanship of our lime to see to it 
that they are made good citizens. 



18 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



2. ILLITERACY IN OUR GREAT CITIES. 



HON. B. PETEKS, 

Editor " Brookl3'n Times." 



IN the time allotted to me this evening I 
have been requested to consider tlie ques- 
tion of illiteracy in connection with our great 
cities, the dangers it may be said to involve, 
and the best way to avoid these dangers. 

Some twenty years ago the people of this 
country, as with the stroke of a pen, freed 
four millions of bondmen, to whom all edu- 
cational advantages had not only been made 
impossible by their social condition, but had 
been positively interdicted by special statutes 
in every slave State. 

A few years after the Negroes had been 
made free it was found necessary, for their 
proper protection, to invest them witii the 
elective franchise. This right had not been 
conferred for any great length of time ere it 
became apparent to every clear-headed citizen 
or the republic that special efforts must be 
made by the humane and philanthropic, for 
the safety of the countrj'', to advance the 
cause of education, not only with special ref- 
erence to the class among whom these new- 
made voters were found, but in every South- 
ern State, and for the benefit of the whites 
iuid blacks alike. For some years past there 
has been an intelligent and wide-spread move- 
ment — as the result of this recognized neces- 
sity — among the better and more thoughtful 
of our citizens, in private and official stations, 
to awaken the lawmaking authorities of the 
Government, in order to induce tliem to grant 
national aid to the States in which this un- 
usual degree of illiteracy exists, for the ex- 
press purpose of reducing the evil to a mini- 
mum. Senator Blair, of New Hampshire, in 
the United States Senate, has given persist- 
ent and intelligent support to this measure. 
Mr. Hayes, both while President and since 
his retirement from office, has paid special 
attention to this subject. In other and varied 
ways has this question been urged upon the 
attention of tiie American people, and the 
fiiet has bsen demonstrated that there exists 
a pressing necessity for favorable national 
action on this all-important subject. While 
no practical steps have been taken, so far as 
tlie granting of national aid is concerned, 
there are many reasons for believing that the 
intelligence of the country has been awak- 
ened, and awakened sufficiently on this sub- 
ject to Influence Congress, and that, ere many 
years pass away, a liheral policy will be iii- 
augurated by the Government. 

In the meantime the need of the South, 
occasioned by the changed condition of those 
once held in slavery, and who were thereby 
kept in ignorance — springing, it is true, from 



a different cause, and existing on a more 
limited scale, but still dangerous and for- 
bidding — has its exact counterpart in all 
our populous cities. In these cities there 
exists an increasing class that is enslaved by 
the most reckless vices, by lives of steady 
and almost unbroken debauchery, a class that 
is impoverished by thriftlessuess, and whose 
progeny, by the most abject degradation — 
into which it is born, and in the midst of 
which it is doomed to exist and to grow up 
— is deprived of every possible advantage, 
not only educational, but physical, social, 
moral, and religious; and will continue to he 
deprived of these advantages, unless provided 
with the means to secure them at the public 
expense. No cit}'- has its Heights, its Fifth 
Avenue, or its Beacon Street, that has not, 
also, and not far away, its Fifth Ward, its 
Baxter Street, and its North End. As the 
population of our great cities increases, and 
wealth multiplies in the hands of the few, 
while the masses are impoverished and large 
numbers of them are hopelessly degraded — 
though it be in great proportion by the vices 
that are so common among the helpless mor- 
tals of our race — it is becoming more and 
more a pressing question of the gravest im- 
portance: What shall he done tviih the children 
of those loho are too debauched, or too poor, to 
care for their offspring in any proper or Sys- 
tematic way ? that is, witli the children of those 
in whom the obligations of maternity and pa- 
ternity have lost their force ? We may be told 
that our common schools are free to all, 
and have been established to educate the 
children of the poorest citizen of the Repub- 
lic. That may be very true, and yet it is no 
impeachment of our public-school system to 
say tliat, as at present organized, it does not, 
and can not, reach the children of the partic- 
ular class to which I refer. It may seem 
startling, but it is nevertheless a fact, that 
there are those, and especiallji- in our popu- 
lous cities, who are too poor to send their 
children to our common schools, too degrdded 
to be able to secure to their offspring the 
benefits of our public-school sj'^stem; and 
this is true, no matter how free the public 
schools may be, as at present administered. 
The children of the debauched, of the ragged 
and hungry; of those who consume in drink, 
every night, all they have begged, or stolen, 
or even earned in the day, are placed beloio 
the reacli of our puhlic schools. How, we 
may ask, are the children of the vicious to 
be fitted for, and kept under, the influence of 
the public schools? A moment's reflection 



ILLITERACY IN THE UNITED STATES. 



19 



must convince every one that the poor and 
helplessly degraded cannot be reached by 
any ordinary common-school system such as 
we now have. It is as self-evident as a 
proposition in mathematics, tliat the child 
that is naked cannot be sent to the public 
scliools; and that the child that is not only 
naked, ibut possibly living in a condition of 
starvation, or of semi-starvation, cannot be 
readied by the teachers who are ready to 
impart the rudiments or the fundamentals of 
an education in our public schools. 

It has become well understood that the 
vital sources of danger to our free institu- 
tions are to be found in our great cities. 
While they contain a concentration of wealth, 
of virtue, and of thrift, these favorable con- 
ditions are counterbalanced by a concentra- 
tion as well of the worst elements to be found 
in society. It is in our larger cities that the 
worst features of our modern and peculiarly 
American methods in politics liave been de- 
veloped. The corrupt '"boss" system in 
these cities, by which crafty and unscrupu- 
lous leaders have gathered influence and 
power — througli the unprincipled following 
they have been able to gather about them- 
selves — is almost wholly owing to the crim- 
inal tendencies and the crass ignorance to 
which I have referred. The n^en who live 
from hand to mouth; who, like Micawber, 
are perpetually on the qui vive "'for some- 
thing to turn up," who drink and gamble and 
otherwise waste most of their time in idle- 
ness, are easily organized into mischievous 
cabals, or into rings ; that is, into corrupt 
combinations of bad men, not only for the 
purpose of controlling the politics of a city, 
or a State, or to gain inlluence over the nation, 
but quite too often to promote the chances of 
public plunder, and in the interests of the 
combination. Our great cities have demon- 
strated, and in the most striking manner, 
not only the possibility, but the actual evils, 
of this tendency. This danger was foreseen 
from the earliest days of the Republic. Dr. 
David Ramsay, of South Carolina, in a speech 
delivered at an early date in our history — on 
the significance of our new-found liberties — 
foretold that the special peril to our free in- 
stitutions would not come from the rural 
districts, from the tillers of the soil, but from 
our great cities, where ignorance and vice 
would find a special field for concentration, 
and where unscrupulous men might organize 
tiiose given to these tendencies for corrupt 
and evil purposes. Charles Kingsley de- 
scribed both this class and this danger when 
he said: "We have, then, first of all, to face 
the existence of a dangerous class of this 
kind, into which the weaker as well as the 
worse members of society have a continual 
tendenc_v to sink. A class which, not re- 
specting itself, does not respect others ; which 
has nothing to lose, and all to gain by an- 
archy ; in which the lowest passions, seldom 



gratified, are ready to burst out and avenge 
themselves by frightful methods. " 

It was because of these facts that a muni- 
cipal regime like that inaugurated and con- 
trolled for so many years by Bill Tweed \u 
New York city was made a possible thing. 

A writer in the last number of the Century, 
on ''Caucus Reform," tells us that not in 
our great cities alone has this evil made 
itself felt, but "even in communities like 
many of the New England cities, where 
the traditions of the old town-meeting are in 
a great measure pre^^erved by a wide-spread 
sense of public uuty, which leads men of higli 
standing and repute to attend and share in 
the party management, the caucus is fast 
drifting into the hands of wire-pullers and 
log-rollers, such as have brought disgrace 
upon the primaries of Brooklj^n and New 
York, and the ward-meetings of Boston, 
Philadelphia, and Baltimore." 

If the accepted ma.xim of modern times be 
true, that "as intelligence increases crime 
diminishes," and that as education is diffused 
the possibility of corrupt combinations is ren- 
dered less feasible, ami tuerefore less likely, 
how are we to cope with this danger unless 
it be through education. And if the common 
schools, as now administered and limited, 
cannot be made to reach tue children of the 
debauched, the drunken, and ilie beggared, 
who so largel}' aboinul in our cities, special 
changes need to be made to effect this object, 
and thus to correct, or at least to restrain, 
this danger to our institutions. 

A writer in the Gentkman's Magazine, not 
many years ago, in discussing the "Great 
Towns and their Influence," traced to the 
chief cities of England — to Birmingham, Man- 
chester, Bristol, Liverpool, and Newcastle- 
upon-Tyne — the forces in everj' direction that 
control and shape the life and policy of the 
British Kingdom. Is not the life of this 
new Republic to be sought for and found, 
and not for good alone, but for ill as well, in 
New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, 
and Washington; in Pittsburg, Cincinnati, 
Chicago, and St. Louis? And not in these 
alone, but in the smaller, though in other re- 
spects equally important, municipahties, ihat 
are scattered in such important numbers over 
this great American continent? 

Robert Vaughan, D.D., iu his "Age of 
Great Cities," finds, in the very solidification 
and strength that evil secures to itself in our 
cities, a tendency toward "every thing op- 
posed to individ\ial happiness and the stabil- 
ity of nations." "It is there," he adds, 
" where faction becomes stronger than patri- 
otism," and where men acquire the habit of 
" scrambling tor themselves, heedless of their 
country, of justice, or humanity." " Nowhere 
else," he again declares, "does man acquire 
such expertness in iniquity, and nowhere 
else has evil so large a space over which to 
diffuse its pestilential influence. In tlie pop- 



20 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



iilous city this poison may be said to insinu- 
ate itself almost as through a vein. The 
contact with it is close and perpetual." 

Those who have interested themselves in 
the welfare and improvement of liumanitj'- 
have not been ignorant of this evil, nor in- 
different to its demands, as verj^ vigorous 
efforts, more or less effective and intelligent, 
liave been made for a generation or more to 
reach and cure it. Institutions have been 
estabhslied, supported for the most part by 
charity, to provide for this class. These in- 
stitutions first took on tlie penal form of cor- 
rection, to which young truants and incipient 
criminals were sent, and were known as 
'• Houses of Refuge." They were first es- 
tablished in 1825. They were next called 
"Reform Schools," and are now generally 
known as "Children's Homes" or "Indus- 
trial Schools." Thus the world has gradu- 
ally grown up to the idea of providing for its 
helpless and dependent waifs. 

If I had the devising of the laws, I would 
lift all these places, whether known as 
" lioraes," "industrial" or "reform" schools, 
or by any other name, out of tlie category 
of mere eleemosynary or penal institutions. 
I would make them a part of the public- 
school system of our great cities. I would 
place them directly under the control of our 
Boards of Education, and I would provide 
for a special governing commission by giving 
to the clergymen in every city the riglit to 
meet once in every two or five years, in order 
to select from among the best of their citizens 
five wise and prudent men, whose duty it 
should be to devise ways and means to find 
suitable homes for these wards of societj' — 
these children of the State — when they liad 
attained a suitable age, and had been suf- 
ficiently advanced in their studies. I would 
make the Industrial Schools a special feature 
and a separate department in our public- 
school system. I would provide for these 
poor, unfortunate, and helpless children, not 
only books and teachers, but such clothing 
and shelter and food as their requirements 
and needs might demand. I would do this, 
in the case of every such child, for at least 
two years. In the case of very young 
children I would do it for even a longer 
period. I would provide the extra means — 
and it ought not to require a very large 
amount over the sum we already expend 
upon our public schools — to support these 
institutions by levying a lax on all the 
street-car lines, the elevated railroads, and 
other corporations in our cities. If the con- 
stitutional provision regulating the question 
of taxation on individuals, and requiring 
that the rate of taxation shall be made equal 
upon all could, in any way, be obviated, I 
would also levy a special tax upon all indi- 
viduals of large wealth — say upon all men 
worth over one million dollars in taxable 
assets. A tax, let us estimate, of from one 



tentli of a mill to one mill, as the exigencies 
might demand, ought to yi^ld, if honestly 
collected, the amount required. Tlie rate, 
of course, would have to be determined by 
the amount needed and the aggregate value 
of the taxable possessions that might, in 
this way, be reached and made available for 
this excellent purpose. It ought to be an 
easy matter for a city like New York, for 
instance, to secure, by this means, from one 
to three hundred tlioiisand dollars annually, 
to be expended upon the proper care and 
education of the waifs that exist within its 
borders. Other cities ought to be able t-t> 
secure special sums for this same purpose, 
and in proportion to whatever their actual 
local needs might require. 

I would base the justice of such an exac- 
tion upon the fact that all the corporations 
in this country, to whom such a law would 
apply, hold important and valuable fran- 
chises that were granted them by the people; 
franchises which, as the population and 
wealth of the countrj'- increases, are steadily 
gaining in value : and tiiat, in fact, all men 
of wealth are peculiaily favored by our free 
institutions and enjoy rare opportunities, 
acd have, therefore, peculiar and urgent ob- 
ligations resting upon them, not only toward 
the poor and the children of the poor, but 
toward the masses of the people, and they 
have the very highest stake in the proper 
education and the moral welfare of these 
waifs. It is in tlie most direct sense to the 
interest of the well-to-do — the prosperous — 
that these waifs should be lifted out of 
their condition and made intelligent, law- 
abiding, and thrifty citizens. If any body 
has any interest in upholding our free insti- 
tutions and in making every child born into 
the State a law-abiding, intelligent, and good 
citizen, it is the men of wealth who own 
the property and the stocks upon which I 
would lay this special and important tax. 
Prof. Huxley is credited with tiiis terse re- 
mark, that " No system of public education 
is worthy the name, uviless it creates a 
great educational ladder, with one end in 
tlie gutter and the other in ihe university." 
Horace Mann is said to have exclaimed, 
witli hke force, that, " In our country and in 
our times no man is worthy of the honored 
name of statesman who does LOt include the 
highest practical education of the people in 
all his plans of administration." 

If the law of seU'-preservation in a free 
republic makes the common school and the 
general education of the people a necessity, 
how can it fail to demand, and in the most 
emphatic terms, the proper care of the waifs 
in behalf of whom I plead. The Jukes 
family is not confined to tiiat branch aloue 
so skillfully traced by the late R. L. Dugdale. 
It is a large family and of many branches, 
and to stem its growth the proper and only 
remedy is found in the early and judicious 



ILLITERACY IN THE UNITED STATES. 



21 



care of its projieny and by means of liealthy 
moral education. If uucared for and neg- 
lected, this progeny becomes the seeds of a 
spreading evil. They are a sort of human 
caterpillar that will in due lime spin them- 
selves into cocoons, cocoons that will in turn 
deposit unnumbered eggs; and eggs that 
will in the end hatch out new batches of 
crime; and crime that tends to devour the 
flowering glory of every privilege and bless- 
ing which we now enjoy and in wliich our 
tlirifty and prosperous people have so large 
a stake. 

It is a familiar and a well-established 
fact — and one that conveys its significant 
lesson — that, since the establishment of our 
government, a constantly increasing tide of 
population, most of it of the poorer classes — 
though not until recently of the "assisted 
immigrant " variety — has been poured from 
Europe, for more than a century, into all our 
sea-port towns. Tiiis has tended to swell the 
class of helpless waifs of whom I speak. 
lu due time — in a single generation — they 
give up the national prejudices they bring 
with them and most of the habits of 
life and thought that made them peculiar, 



and, to all intents and purposes, they be- 
come Americans and good citizens, about as 
much so as would have been the case had 
they been born here and reared wholly under 
the influence of our institutions. Intelligent 
citizens attribute to our public schools the 
special influence that helps us so readily to 
absorb and assimilate our extraneously ac- 
quired populations. 

Now, in the same way, it would seem to 
me, we ought to be able — if our industrial 
schools, established especially to benefit the 
waifs of society, were made, as I have sug- 
gested, a part of our public-school system — 
to recover and incorporate these children 
again with our better and more prosperous 
classes, completely assimilating them with 
the moral thrift and virtue of the nation. To 
thus save tlie children of the degraded and 
abandoned ought to be the highest ambition 
of a free people. To say tlie least, this, 
as an object, is worthy of the best thought 
of the best men of the freest nation on 
earth ; and the wisdom and statesmanship 
of our country can find no higher inspiration 
than this affords for wise, generous, and 
practical legislation. 



3. STUMBLING-BLOCKS, OR STEPPING-STONES? 



KOBERT E. DOHERTY, ESQ., 
Assistant Editor of " The Christian Advocate," New York. 



THE author of " Lacon " has pungently said, 
that unless a man can throw fire into his 
i)ook he would better throw his book into 
the fire. That is quite as good a rule for 
the speech-maker as for the book-maker. 
Tiiere is, however, no need to search for 
rhetorical tinder to-night, or to set ourselves 
to the tedious task of fanning flickering 
flames. The facts and figures already pre- 
sented on this platform should fire every 
patriot heart, and cause an explosion of 
righteous indignation against the evils of 
which we have heard, and against ourselves 
for liaving so long and so lethargically per- 
mitted those evils to flourish. 

From the programme I learn that a distin- 
guished statistician was expected here this 
afternoon, to tell us where our illiterate 
masses are. I wish some one could tell us 
where they are not! They teem, by the 
million, among both whites and blacks, in the 
sunny South. They wander in unnumbered 
multitude among the musiiroom settlements 
of the Far West. They are counted by the 
hundred thousand even in cultured New En- 
gland — the very birthplace of the common 
Bchool. They spring up like thistles over all 



our prairies ; they are packed like the paving- 
stones in our great cities ; they are brought 
across the seas by every emigrant ship from 
every country under the skies. Illiteracy is 
uicreasing at a rate that is simply appall- 
ing; and we are sitting with folded hands 
doing nothing, or, at the best, are making 
but fitful efforts to lop off its exuberant 
growth. The ax should be laid to the root 
of the tree — nay, the roots themselves sliould 
be wrenched from American soil, and all that 
ministers to their growth be at once and for- 
ever banished. 

There are, doubtless, many serious obsta- 
cles in the way of the general diffusion of in- 
telligence througii the land, which cannot be 
removed, and which cannot easily be sur- 
mounted. Any one of us could tabulate 
such diffictilties till all the rest grew weary. 
But it is not to these that I am to call your 
attention tliis evening. Other forces at work 
in the nation have furnished the title to this 
addi-ess. These forces are powerful though si- 
lent factors in the education or degradation 
of the masses, and may be made to help in 
the spread of intelligence, or to tend to the 
increase of illiteracy, according to our treat- 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



iiient of them. Incautious walking will turn 
the most convenient stepping-stone into a 
stumbling-block. It is ours to make these 
subtle forces stepping-stones toward enlight- 
enment and prosperity, or stumbling-blocks, 
over which to fall mto ruin. Let us briefly 
consider some of the most important of 
them. 

I. — The Lax Appreciation of the Dignity 
OF Manhood. 

For much of the illiteracy in the United 
States we are to be pitied rather than con- 
demned. For part of it our ancestors are 
responsible f much of it is the result 
of European misgavernment. Our attitude 
toward this imported ignorance, however, 
has been far from discreet. We have been 
thoughtless in cur tolerance, and have al- 
lowed our liberality to run to excess. One of 
the great metropolitan dailies said, a few 
years ago, that if a man stood at the 
City Hall, in New York, and cast stones 
indiscriminately into the thronged thorough- 
fare, nine out of every ten men he hit would 
be well qualified for the office of Chief Execu- 
tive of the nation. This extravagant state- 
ment is representative of a laxity of thought 
which is traceable in the popular discussion 
of all political, social, and educational 
questions. 

Perhaps no danger is, to-day, more threat- 
ening to the enlightenment of our nation — 
more threatening even to its continued 
existence — than that which lurks underneath 
that ready appreciation of the dignity of 
manhood which is the glory of American 
society and American thought. This is the 
one country on the round world in wliich 
— regardless of wealth and regardless of 
race — the idea of Burns's song is realized : 
" A man's a man for a' thnt." We feel that 
noble sentiment in our hearts ; we announced 
it in our Declaration of Independence one 
hundred years ago ; a little later, we em- 
bodied it in our Constitution ; we have em- 
phasized it in every amendment adopted 
since ; we recognize it constantly with pride 
— and in this very recognition the danger 
lurks. Already the consequences of an in- 
considerate and distorted conception of this 
noble doctrine are felt in a degeneration of 
our ideal of manhood, and — what bears more 
directly on the thought before us — in a light 
valuation of the inestimable privileges of 
universal education, and a frivolous deprecia- 
tion of profound scholarship. 

It is too late to lament the policy which 
has made the vote of the most intelligent 
man in this auditorium count no more 
than the vote of the most ignorant freed- 
man or foreigner. But, thank God! it is 
not too late to declare open hostility to 
that so-called "love of liberty" which, in 
the great centers of our population, has 



put a premium on ignorance; it is not too 
late to learn the wholesome lesson that 
equal justice to all demands intelligent and 
educated office-holders, and, as far as may 
be, intelligent and educated voters ; it is not 
too late to devise and put into practice far- 
reaching measures for instructing, in at least 
the elements of morals and letters, the hun- 
dreds of thousands of adults who annually 
cast their ballots for men and meastn-es 
of whom and which they know nothing. 
Tolerance of ignorance is as criminal and 
preposterous as would be the tolerance of 
the most pestiferous physical disease. 

Another potent factor for good or for evil 
exists in 

II. — The Education of Our Girls. 

While few topics have elicited more wordy 
discussion during a quarter century than 
that inchoate and indeterminate thing called 
Woman's Eights, there is, perhaps, no im- 
portant subject which has called forth so 
little thoughtful attention as this — the 
most momentous question of all — How shall 
we best secure the highest education for our 
girls ? Never before, in the history of the 
world, has there been a nation or an age in 
which the young women were so much edu- 
cated as in these United States and these 
closing decades of the nineteenth century. 
The doors of our public schools are as widely 
opened to them as to our boys. Tlie rapid, 
heated processes of our civilization tend to 
tiieir profuse and abnormal development; but 
it is a development in characteristics which, 
if we are not careful, may lead to the deteri- 
oration of our race. I stand not here to 
champion any pet theory for or again-t 
the recognition of " sex in education." I 
plead, simply, that the lofti(;st ideals be 
adopted for the training of our daughters in 
body, in intellect, and in morals. Their edu- 
cation is the most sacred trust committed to 
this great Republic. The claims of the ig- 
norant immigrant voters ; the pressing needs, 
even, of the freedmen of the South, are 
hardly as momentous as the solemn demands 
made upon us by these mothers of our future 
generations. For, indeed, these demands in- 
clude the others. By the grade of intelli- 
gence and the moral standards of these young 
women the future of our nation is to be 
molded. The sneering allusions to " the girl 
of the period" that we so often hear from 
press and platform, are unmistakable indica- 
tions of a want of reverence for womanhood 
that is alarming. Do not lightly dismiss this 
thought as irrelevant to the general, subject 
in hand — the illiteracy of our nation. A largo 
proportion of all the maidens in the United 
States, who stand on the verge of matrimony 
and motherhood, "where brook and river 
meet," are utterly unqualified for the solemn 
responsibilities before them. Thousands of 
them — dusky daughters of the South, children 



ILLITERACY IN THE UNITED STATES. 



23 



ol' {ji'iest-iidden foreigners, offsprino: of polyo-- 
.•imous Morinons — have spenc ilie golden }'ears 
of rheir youth outside of the educational 
prnvi.siond of our school^^, and iheir descend- 
ants will, in the natural order of events, 
grow up ia;norant and uncared-for; while the 
irainiug- of'ninnv of their more favored sisters 
has had so little bearing upon the duties of 
nil iihe' hood that it would be idle to expect to 
liuii their progeny on the side of enligliten- 
nieut. By the intelligence and moral pur- 
pose of tliese mothers of the future, I repeat, 
aio die destinies of the Republic to be shaped, 
and their titling culture is the most impera- 
tive of national duties. 

III.— The Public School as an Indus- 
trial Agency. 

Another of the most formidable difficulties 
hitlierto found in the way of securing 
universal enlightenment, lies in the inade- 
quacy of the public school as an industrial 
agency. Its value as an enlightening and 
civilizing agency can hardly be overesti- 
mated; but as a means of industrial training 
it is a failure. The years of study are often 
sadly abridged because of the poverty of par- 
ents, whose children must as early as possi- 
ble be taught the principles of their life- 
work — ^in trade, mechanics, housekeeping, 
or agriculture. The boy who is destined to 
become a bricklayer, a carpenter, or a plumb- 
er — the girl whose humble energies are to be 
expended in dairy work or dress-raaking — 
have the same rights in the sliaping of the 
public-school curriculum as those of higher 
social rank. Our children are kept at tiie 
tedious study of branches which can be of 
no practical use to ninety-nine out of one 
liuudred of them when school i-nys are over. 
To object to the expansion of the public- 
school system to meet the requirements of 
exigencies is to ignore the logic and mareli of 
events. As long as the energies of the 
great majority of our boys and gii-ls must in 
their maturity be tasked to provide them- 
selves with the necessaries of life, so long 
should our rudimentary schools be industrial 
as well as literary. 

The consideration of this need of American 
children lor an industrial training brings 
tt) view another stepping-stone toward na- 
tional prosperity, which has already been 
turned into a stumbling-block ; a danger that 
stands iu contrast with t!ie need just pre- 
sented; a danger which is not new to tlie 
thoughtful minds of our country, but which 
haa of late been happily phrased by an em- 
inent educator as 

IV. — Mercantilism. 

G-uizot, in his " Historj^ of Civilization," 

makes the broad generalization, that '' when 

a civilization is dominated over by some one 

principle, which gains complete mastery, 



and develops all in subordination to itself, 
tile civilization will eitlier sink into immo- 
bility, or else will develop with astonishing 
rapidity and brilliancy only to decline and 
decay just as rapidly. On the other hand, 
a civilization in which no one element 
ever becomes powerful enough to exer- 
cise permanent despotism over the others, 
but in wliich many strong elements exist 
together, stimulating and restraining each 
other, will be far more rich and varied, 
and far longer lived — a civilization inclos- 
ing in itself principles and powers which, 
by their constant action on each other, 
will ever renew its youth and vigor." 
President White, whose recent thoughtful 
paper on this subject merits repeated pe- 
rusal by every friend of education, and every 
lover of his countr}--, cites Spain, Russia, and 
the Spanish-American Republics as types of 
the immobile civilization which is developed 
when one principle reigns supreme.. Venice 
sprang with unparalleled rapidity into unpar- 
alleled glory, and sank as rapidl}' into insig- 
nificance; whil& England and Germany are fair 
samples of the healthier growth. We behold 
the remarkably rapid and brilliant develop- 
ment of the United States, and ask what has 
controlled this marvelous growth? Listen 
to the eloquent but ominous reply of President 
White : " The one element which has become 
not merely dominant, but all-prevailing, is a 
combination of the industrial spirit with the 
trade spirit — mercantilism. Here is evidently 
the mind which moves the mass. The rail- 
ways, canals, telegraphs, manufactories, 
mines, furnaces, city after city made up 
of lines of shops, great hotels filled with 
dyspeptics, long trains of cars filled with 
hurrying men and jaded women — all these 
outward, visible signs point to one inward 
and spiritual grace — that of trade. Mercan- 
tilism in great cities and in small towns, in 
society and iu the individual, is becoming a 
disease — feverish, cancerous. Of ihe great 
political questions now before the nation — 
the education of the freedmen and cho 
illiterate generally, the reform of the civil 
service, the rectification of the electoral- 
college system, and tariff reform — the one 
question of which we hear the most, and the 
only one in which the nation at large seems 
to take any interest, is the tariff; the one 
question which has to do with trade and 
manufactures. The political spirit, the spirit 
of patriotism, is dominated by the mercantile 
interest, and the same is true of education, 
science, and literature. The strength of these 
elements in the ordinary normal development 
of our American civilization, compared with 
that of mercantilism, is weak." 

What, then, is to be done? How shall 
mercantilism, which has thus far been in the 
main a great blessing, be prevented from 
becoming, in obedience to an inexorable law 
of history, a curse ? The essayist answers 



24 



CHBI8TIAN EDUCATORS IN GOUNGIL. 



that "the greatest work which the coming 
century has to do in this century is to build 
up an aristocracy of thought and feehng 
which shall hold its own against the aristoc- 
racy of mercantilism." So far as this can be 
done by education, it must be done — at least 
so 'ar as foundation work is concerned — in 
the public schnol. And the neglect of the 
great opportunities for spreading enlighten- 
ment which our rapid attainment of wealth 
has tlirust upon us — in other words, the neg- 
lect of the most thorougli development of 
popular education — will certainly secure for 
us the fate of Venice or of Peru. 

This thought brings us by natural transi- 
tion to the last point to which I will call your 
attention — the imperative necessity of 

V. — Training the Moral Faculties op 
THE Young. 

The criminals of to-day will soon have all 
passed into the grave. Who, it has been 
sadly asked by a thoughtful writer — who will 
fill our prisons and reformatories a score of 
years hence? who, of the next generation, 
will supply the daily records of burglary and 
arson, licentiousness and murder? Some 
you will find to-niglit where they are to be 
expected — loitering in the streets, or loung- 
ing on the corners, or breathing the air of 
some vile den, with nothing to do but to 
learn the language of vice, as it comes from 
the lips of their older companions. Mani- 
festly, our first duty concerning these is to 
gather them into tlie schools and to teach 
them trades — else they will remain where 
they now are, in the ranks of the army of 
illiterates. But the best knowledge of books 
and of trades will never rid the world of ras- 
cals. Nay, aside from moral culture, such 
knowledge is even unable to perpetuate it- 
self. It is a painful fact that maiiy of our 
future criminals dwell in tlie best of our 
homes, and are trained in the best of our 
schools. And the whole trend of their influ- 
ence is as certainly downward intellectually 
as it is in morals. In other words, the illit- 
erates as a class are vicious, and will remain 
so until educated; while the influence of ed- 
ucated criminals tends directly to the increase 
of ignorance. 

"I see but one way in which we can rid 
ourselves of rascals," said Dr. Holland, "and 
that is to stop raising them. We have im- 
prisoned tliem, we have fined them, we have 
hanged them; we have tried to reform them 
b)- the best appointed machinery; we have 
blessed them and cursed them alternately, 
but the stock is imdiminished. As one dies 
another takes his place, and does his best to 
bring a companion with him. Reforms do 
not reclaim and revivals do not reach them. 
I repeat it, I see but one way to rid ourselves 
of them, and that is to stop raising them." 

But how can we stop raising them? Thou- 
sands of our homes are hopelessly corrupt; 



hundreds of thousands of our children are 
beyond the influence of Church and Sunday- 
school, and if their moral faculties are to be 
trained at all it must be in the public school. 
We have spent our tinae and strained our 
tempers in paltry qtiibbles about the reading 
of a few verses from the Bible, or the per- 
functory repetition of tlie Lord's prayer, and 
have neglected the weightier matter of direct 
ethical culture. Meanwhile a generation has 
slipped past us into manhood with moral 
faculties largely untrained. 

The claims of the illiterate, the defects of 
our common-school system, the duty of com- 
pulsory education, and the need of national 
aid, have already been emphasized, and will 
be reiterated, by voices more eloquent than 
mine. The task allotted to me has been to 
bring to your attention, in the briefest possi- 
ble manner, elements which for the most 
part lie beyond the reach of State or nation, 
but not beyond the puissant sway of the 
heart and brain of the people. We look 
back sometimes with pride over the path-way 
of our country's progress, and behold a cent- 
ury of unexampled prosperity. It is for us 
to say whether that prosperity shall continue. 
Our hands are on the lever which sways the 
switch; our acting and our thinking, our 
voting and our prayers, are to direct the na- 
tion toward a future still more glorious, or 
turn it aside to moral, mental, and physical 
decay. 

As I stand, to-night, in this beautiful sea- 
side resort, within sound of the billows' end- 
less monotone, I am reminded of one of the 
most solemn visions that was ever evoked by 
the " fine frenzy " of prophet or poet. A 
queenly figure stands in lonely grief upon the 
shore of time, and thus bewails her wasted 
opportunities : 

" I stand amid the roar 

Of a surf-tormented shore, 

And I hold within my hand 

Grains of the golden sand. 

How few I — yet how they creep 

Through my fingers to the deep 

While I weep 1 

O God I can I not clasp 

Them with a tighter grasp ? 

God I can I not save 

One from the pitiless wave ? " 

Friends, half a century of negligence will 
turn that weird picture into a type of our 
country, and put into the mouths of our chil- 
dren that mournful lament. For unvalued 
advantages soon pass beyond reach, and in 
education, as truly as in religion, NOW is the 
day of salvation. 

But before the imagination of the enlight- 
ened patriot no such hopeless scenes as 
this arise. Up through the long vistas 
of coming ages he hears the clock of 
eternity strike the hour that shall call 



ILLITEBACT IN THE UNITED STATES. 



35 



nations, as well as individuals, to the bar 
of God for judgment. One by one they 
come, lamenting their faihires and plead- 
ing, ill extenuation, their virtuous achieve- 
ments. To their lamentations and their 
pleadings let us for a moment give ear. 

See the plaintive figure of Judea Capta 
crouching in degradation. Beside her is the 
harp of psalmody, whose chords shall never 
again be struck. At her feet lies the pro- 
phetic scroll. She weeps over her sins, but 
faintly pleads her unrivaled service to the 
world in the dissemination of the divine law 
and the divine message of mercy. 

Listen to the G-enius of old Greece, as she 
stands in cowering beauty — like a dethroned 
Venus — confessing her profligacy, her count- 
less wasted opportunities, but pleading, 
" Nevertlieless all art is mine, and all phi- 
losophy; my shame should be allowed to- 
die with me, for down to the farthest ages 
my glory is shed." 

See cruel, leciierous Rome, acknowledging 
a thousand abominations that even Gibbon 
never recorded, but pointing in suUen'pride to 
the great structure of modern civilization as 
built on her foundations. 

There, too, are gathered the great pow- 
ers of modem times. Brilliant, sensuous, 
volatile France, mother of the sneering 
Voltaire and the murderous Robespierre, 
sobered at last, calls to mind the names 
of Calvia and Coligny, and her thought- 



ful and heroic sons of later days. Phleg- 
matic Germany claims credit for the Refor- 
mation and for the motheihood of modern phi- 
losophy. England, dignified and stately even 
in that climactic hour, pleads a career given, 
in spite of many grievous backsets, to the 
advancement of the race. 

What shall the Genius of our own be- 
loved country say as she stands before 
that august tribunal? Much of error and 
failure must be confessed. Listen: "I came 
too late upon the scene of action to 
give the primal impulse to any of the 
great movements for the elevation of man- 
kind. My art I had to borrow from Athens, 
my religion from Jewry, my law from 
Rome. Among all my sons I can point to no 
Homer nor Ccesar, to no Raphael nor Mozart. 
But this one thing I have done. By a proper 
appreciation of the dignity and of the solemn 
responsibihties of manhood; by a lofty and 
discreet estimate of true womanhood; by a 
correct understanding of the value and of the 
ends of rational education ; and by conscien- 
tious attention to moral culture, I have secured 
to each of my sons and daughters a prac- 
tical, comprehensive, thorough fitness for the 
manifold duties of life. Thus have I not 
only avoided the dangers whose evils were 
intrinsic, but, by the help of the almiglity 
Ruler of nations, have turned even the stum- 
bling-blocks of illiteracy into stepping-stones 
toward national enlightenmeat" 



4. THE DANGER OF DELAY. 



HON. ALBION W. TOURGEB, 
Editor of "The Continent," Philadelphia, Pa. 



I AM very glad that the subject ai^signed to 
me this evening is the danger of neglect- 
ing or delaying national action in regard to 
education. I do not use the phrase " na- 
tional aid to education," which has come 
into vogue through its use in the platform 
adopted by the Republican Convention of 
1880, not only because it is insensible, but 
also because the phrase itself is stamped 
with the hoof-mark of cowardly evasion. 
It was the danger likely to result to the na- 
tion from the ignorance of its voters that 
first directed my attention to the subject; 
it was this apprehension that led me to 
elaborate a plan of national action for the 
extinction of iUiteracy; it was the appre- 
hension of this danger that has inspired all 
my efforts to implant this idea in the minds 
of the American people; and it is to this 
danger, which hourly grows more serious, 
that I beg to call the earnest attention of 
this audience during the time allotted to me. 



jSTational action upon the subject of gen- 
eral education, for the present at least, if not 
forever, should be confined to the extinction 
of illiteracy — the promotion of primary edu- 
cacation among illiterate masses. To be able 
to read and write is to have the key of all 
knowledge and all power. He who has the 
abihty to read may know all that man hath 
wrought and taught. All that the ages 
have learned or that God has revealed is 
open to him who reads the printed page, 
while he who wields the pen speaks to every 
soul that stands between himself and the 
hither shore of eternity. The lack of this 
knowledge we call illiteracy — speaking mora 
accurately, we might say mental blindness — 
and its* possession we call intelligence. The 
man who cannot read must take all his 
knowledge on trust. The breath of his fel- 
low is his only means of learning what lies 
beyond the scope of his own vision or the 
line of his own experience. 



26 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL, 



Every government, whatever its form or 
character, has a twofold interest in the in- 
telligence of the citizen or subject. In the 
tirst place, intelligence increases his value as 
a unit of the national life. Economically 
considered, the wealth of the wiiole com- 
munity depends on the productive power of 
its individuals. A man wlio can read and 
write is wortli more as a laborer, a wealth- 
producer, and he is far less likely to become 
a burden to society, both because of the 
wider field of industry open before liim 
and of the pride developed by intelligence, 
that makes him shrink from pauperism as 
the Orieulal does from leprosy. In this re- 
spect the interest of our general government 
in the inteUigence of the masses of its peo- 
ple is directly very much less than that of 
any other government in the world. It is 
only indirectly that our national organism is 
affected by any consideration of individual 
Wealth or poverty. It does not concern it- 
self with the citizen as an economic factor 
at all. Whether a man is rich or poor, pau- 
per or millionaire, it is all the same to the 
nation. Its revenue is not directly affected 
by the one fact or the other. The nation 
maintains no poor-houses and levies no ad 
valorem taxes on the citizen's possessions. 
In this respect the several States of the 
Union only have any direct interest in the 
education of our illiterate masses. To them 
it is of the utmost importance that the citi- 
zen should be afforded every possible means 
of self-support and be withheld from pauper- 
ism by every conceivable influence. Educa- 
tion as an investment is purely within the 
purview of the State governments. The Jails 
as well as the poor-houses are all their prop- 
erty, and the prisoners their charge. "Within 
this line tiie general government does not 
seek to come. Save tor its own protection 
and defense, or in assertion of the rights of 
its citizens, it cannot interfere in the ad- 
ministration of justice or the relief of pau- 
perism. 

It is on this alone that not only the right 
but the duty of the general government to 
secure the intelligence of the masses rests. 
Tlie United Slates have no right to tax the 
rich to educate the poor simply because they 
are poor. That pertains entirely to the 
polity of the State, and is the basis principle 
of ail our State systems of education. The 
State finds it sound policy to educate the 
children of the poor rather than support the 
pauperism that would accrue from their ig- 
norance. The general government has no 
right to tax the people of Massachusetts to 
educate the children of Missouri for the 
Bake of reducing the proportion of criminals 
in that State. 

There is one respect, however, in which 
the interest of the general government is 
exactly co-ordinate with that of the State in 
the intelligence of the citizen, and that is in 



so far as it affects his capacity for self govern- 
ment. Crime and pauperism are matters for 
the State alone to consider, but good guverii- 
ment is a thing of common interest to both Stale 
and nation, and it is equally the duty of the 
State and of (he nation to see to it that the 
citizen is made capable of performing intelli- 
gently, honestly, and fearlessly the duties de- 
volving on him as such. To koth the intelli- 
gence of the citizen is a matter of eqtial and 
common concern. The same law of self- 
preservation that makes armies and navies a 
necessity of all governments to resist foes 
from without, makes the school-house an 
indispensable bulwark— indispensable in a 
republican government to guard it against 
the still more dangerous encroachment of 
foes from within. This, then, is the basis of 
all right or authority vested in the govern- 
ment of the United States to take any action, 
appriipriate funds, or exercise authority, or 
in any respect to interest itself in the educa- 
tion of the citizen, to wit: Intelligence is 
necessary to the pj-oper exercise of electoral 
ponder. By its abv^e the nation is exposed to 
danger. It has, therefore, the right to defend 
itself from harm and perpetuate its own exist- 
ence by the extinction of illiteracy or its reduc- 
tion to an innocuous proportion. 

Our system of government, both State and 
national, is based upon the hypothesis of 
equal power in each individual voter. 

It is based, too, upon the principle that 
the will of the majority, if not always cor- 
rect, is the nearest approach to the right 
which it is possible to attain. If this principle 
is not a true one, then republican govern- 
ment is radically defective, and must always 
result in ultimate failure. To render it even 
approximately true, however, three things 
must co-exist: 

1. Each individual voter — each co-ordinate 
king — must have a distinct and intelligent 
opinion in regard to the question which the 
collective sovereignty is called upon to de- 
cide. 2. He must be able to express that 
opinion by his ballot. 3. He must be honest 
enough and brave enough and keen enough 
to resist corruption, defy violence, and deft-at 
fraud. 

Tliese things can never be true of a whole 
people, and in so far as either of them is 
lacking, so far the elective power is debased 
and the government ceases to be the will of 
a true majority — a government by the people. 
The first two of these essential conditions 
are dependent entirely upon intelligence. 
No illiterate man can form a reliable opinion 
upon a matter of pubhc policy, or be able to 
know that his ballot expresses such opinion. 
He may be right, but he cannot know that he 
is so. His ballot may express his will, but 
he can only have another's assurance that it 
does. The intelligent voter may be wrong, 
but he is far more likely to be right than if 
the whole world of printed facts was excluded 



ILLITERACY IN THE UNITED STATES. 



27 



from his consciousness. His ballot may not 
accurately express his purpose, but it is in- 
finitely more likely to do so than if he could 
not read the names it bears. 

So, too, the third essential attribute of the 
voter is in a great measure dependent upon 
intelligence. It is very true tbat intelligence 
does not, of necessity, make a man honest, 
or brave, or patriotic. But it protects the 
honest man from fraud, increases his power 
to prevent imposition, makes him competent 
to watch over the ballot-box, and to see to 
it that the will of the majority is carried into 
effect. Intelligence enhances the moral sense 
also, and if it does not always balHe corrup- 
tion, throws a thousand obstacles in its path- 
way. Intelligence may aid one man to com- 
mit fraud, but it will also arm a thousand to 
detect it. The printed page may lend itself 
10 deception, but it brings also the remeily. 
While one demagogue hangs out thereby a 
false light upon a lee shore, a thousand hon- 
est lamps mark distinctly the safe and true 
channel. If the ignorant man is right it is 
by accident ; the intelligent man, with equal 
honesty, is a thousand times more likely 
both to understand and to do that which 
ought to be right. It is this doctrine of an 
intelligent choice that lies at the root of re- 
publican governme at. There will, of course, 
always be men in every community who will 
be mistaken, weak, mercenary, and corrupt, 
for this IS simply human nature. There will 
be men who neither know nor care anything 
about the public weal. There will be a large 
class wlio, while entirely capable of per- 
forming this highest act of citizenship hon- 
estly and wisely, are either too careless, too 
selfish, or too busy to attend to their 
part in the work of self-government. These 
will be found in all communities in greater 
or less proportions. They are like bad rulers 
and corrupt legislators, in that they can never 
be entirely eliminated. For this reason no 
human government can be made perfect. 
For the performance of this high duty, how- 
ever, every one must see that intelligence is 
the first prerequisite. An ignorant voter is 
like a blind swordsman. He may destroy his 
enemy, but he is quite as likely to slay his 
friend. 

The republican idea is not based upon the 
calculation of chances, but upon the principle 
that the mass of the people are sufSciently 
intelligent to know what will constitute 
the greatest good to the greatest number ; 
that a majority of them are honest, incorrup- 
tible, and brave enough to stand by their 
opinions and see that they are carried into 
effect. 

Because the public weal is affected only by 
the action of majorities, however, the mere 
numbers of the illiterate to be found in any 
community afford no reasonable criterion by 
which to estimate the danger that ma,j arise 
from a lack of intelligence on the part of the 



voter. The electoral power — the individuals 
who make up the body politic — will always 
be divided more or less evenly between two 
great parties, or, to speak more accurately, 
will be divided between the affirmative and 
negative of some specific policy. There will 
always be a party who wish something to 
be done and a party wlio do not wisii it to 
be done. There may be infinite gradations 
of thought among the individuals. One may 
think it should be done to-day or to-morrow; 
another that it should be delayed until next 
week or next year, or forever. Still tlie 
same wall separates them. To do or not to 
do is always the line of demarcation. Tlicre 
may be times when this line is difficult to 
trace — when, perhaps, it is only trajeable at 
all by reference to the past. The impetus 
of a heated struggle may carry party organ- 
izations far beyond the point aimed at in the 
outset. After any specific idea has become 
a part of the public policy, parties may still 
be divided for a considerable time on the 
question whether it ought to have been ap- 
proved or not. But in the past, the present, 
or the future, the fact that separates parties 
in a republic is the doing or not doing of 
some particular thing, and so single is tlie 
human mind in its action, that one idea 
usually dominates each party, ratlier than the 
composite declaration of faith found in party 
platforms. 

Where the intelligence of a community is 
fairly divided between two couflicting ideas, 
and party-spirit is equally intense upon both 
sides of the dividing line, a very considerable 
pio[)ortion of ignorance may be regarded as 
an element of little danger. Suppose a 
farming community at the West to be pretty 
evenly divided between two greit parties, 
and to have in its midst ten, twenty, or even 
thirty p-r cent, of illiterates, who are of the 
same stock, of the same religious faith as 
the rest of the community, and pursuing the 
same general vocations. Suppose (if it be 
possible to suppose such a thing) that it were 
a Protestant community, of ISTew England 
descent, devoted to agriculture, having twenty 
per cent, of illiteracy among its voters, and 
its intelligence thus equably divided between 
two parties. In such a cas^ it is probable 
that even so large a percentage of illiteracy 
as this would not seriously aftoct any political 
result. The intelligence being so evenly di- 
vided, the two wings of like character and 
influence, and both equally allied by race, 
creed, and interest to the illiterates, these 
latter would in all probability be divided in 
about the same proportion as their intelli- 
gent neighbors upon the issues ou which the 
parties stood opposed. 

The mere statement of the number of il- 
literates in any State does not of itself, there- 
fore, convey any definite idea of the danger 
to be apprehended from that source. If the 
population be homogeneous in race, religion, 



28 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



and occupation, it can be safely disreorarded. 
If, however, the main body of the iUiterates 
be distinguished from the mass of intelhgeuce 
by race, creed, or occupation, or if they be 
aggregated in one portion of the common- 
wealtli and not found in another, then igno- 
rance becomes at once a source of peril that 
cannot be for a moment overlooked. If, for 
instance, the illiteracy of the State of New 
York were evenly spread over its entire ex- 
tent, and thoroughly amalgamated in senti- 
ment and interest with its people, they would 
not be found almost entirely upon one side 
in politics, and, as a body, they would at 
once become politically insignificaut. That 
very instant tlie problem of municipal gov- 
ernment in the city of New York would be- 
come OLie easy of solution. At present, the 
whole question of the government of the 
metropolis may be said to resolve itself into 
an attempt to find some method by whicli to 
neutnilize the power of its massed illiteracy. 
Its vicious and degraded classes; its unas- 
similated foreign population; its almost in- 
divisible Catholic element — which classes 
embrace nineteen twentieths of its illiteracy 
— these are the dice with which its politicians 
gamble. They are isolated very largely from 
the balance of lier population, not merely by 
the fact of illiteracy, but by the sentiment of 
creed or race. The only possible method of 
assimilating such classes, and constituting 
them a safe and reliable element in self-gov- 
ernment is to extinguish illiteracy, or reduce 
it to a minimum, and open tlie way to a clear 
apprehension of the general interest by tlie 
individual voters. Of course, the vicious 
and corrupt will always remain, but the 
honest, intelligent man, whatever liis creed 
or race, will, soon or later, come to under- 
stand that the good of the whole is his own 
highest advantage. Intelligence is the avenue 
by which genuine naturalization comes — it is 
the menstruum by wliich seemiuuly destruc- 
tive mgredients are resolved into a consistent 
and innocuous whole. 

It is only in a few great centers of popu- 
lation at the North that illiteracy has as yet 
become a matter of serious public concern, 
or is at all likely to do so. Even in these 
tiiis evil may safely be left to the care of the 
States in which these great cities are situ- 
ated, because those States are abundantly 
able to apply the remedy, the public senti- 
ment therein is in iavor of its application, 
and there is no insuperable obstacle to its 
general adoption. In other words, the pub- 
lic-school system of the North, with the 
public sentiment that stands behind it, is 
quite sufficieui not only to hold m check, but 
to reduce to insignificance, the percentage 
of illiteracy within its own borders. All 
tliat the people of any Northern common- 
wealth need to know is that illiteracy is 
increasing, or that it is becoming dangerous 
to the State, and they will stamp it out at 



any cost. So far as the Norihern States are 
concerned, there is no cause for national 
action, and the pittance that would come to 
each from any fund distributed on the basis 
of illiteracy would be so insignificant in 
comparison with its own appropriations for 
educational purposes as to be almost un- 
worthy of consideration. 

When we come to look at the state of 
affairs subsisting in the Southern States, 
however, we find all these conditions re- 
versed. Tiie proportion of illiterates in 
I hose States is so great that even under the 
most favorable circumstances the ignorant 
voter must, for a generation at least, consti- 
tute a serious obstacle to prosperous and 
effective self-government. If there were no 
distinction of race, color, or previous condi- 
tion, if there were no conflicting interest 
springing out of the general relation of em- 
ployer and employed, or of landlord and ten- 
ant, still the problem of illiteracy at the SoutJi 
would be a serious and difficult one. What 
is that problem ? To state it broadly, from 
forty to fifty-five per cent, of the voters of those 
States are unable to read the ballots which they 
cast! Or, to put it in another form, we may 
Sciy that in the sixteen States in which the 
six millions of colored people are chiefly to 
be found, eighti/ per cent, of the colored and 
thiiiy per cent, of the white population are 
illiterate. 

There are more illiterate voters in South 
Carolina than tliere are electors who are able 
to read their ballots. 

In Kentucky there are more white' than 
colored illiterates. 

Despite all, the fact that the people of the 
North have given twenty millions of dollars 
to the South for educational purposes since 
1865, and although those States have done 
what the}^ have in that direction, there were 
more illiterates in the South in 1880 than in 
1870, and there are more now than then. 
Gldlclren are bom there faster than they are 
taught to read. 

Tliese are general statements of the same 
fact, to wit : A vast proportion of tlie gov- 
erning power in those States are utterly and 
absolutely incapable 

1. Of forming an intelligent opinion of the 
quesiions they are called upon to decide. 

2. Of knowing whether their ballots ex- 
press the opinions which they have ; and 

3. Of exercising such watch and ward over 
the ballot after it is cast as shall insure its 
due efieet upon the result. 

In other words, they have the power with- 
out possibility of knowledge as to its right- 
eous, independent use as constituent rulers 
of the Stale and nation. 

Does this fact mean any thing to the nation ? 
A vote cast in Florida is just as potent 
for national good or ill as if cast in Maine. 
The sixteen States in question represent 
three fourths of a majority in the Electoral 



ILLITERACY IN THE UNITED STATES. 



29 



C^ollege, more than two thirds of a ranjofity in 
the House of Representatives, and eig/d 
■hinths of a majority in tlie Senate of tlie 
United States! ! 'I'lie illiieracy of tlie South, 
■plus ten per cent, of its inteUigent voters, 
acting together and their ballots being 
honestly counted, would elect seventy-four j^er 
cent, of a President. If tlie illiterate vote bo 
suppressed in whole or iu part by fraud or 
otherwise, then it would require only a 
miijority of the intelligent vote to choose the 
same proportion of electors. To place this 
fact in a still more striking light, we may say 
that one fifth of the electoral votes of the North, 
added to a South made solid either by the 
suppression or by the predominance of its illit- 
erate masses, is sufficient to determine the 
character of our national government. The 
nation's interest in the intelligence of the 
voter in these States is, therefore, over- 
whelming and intense. 

These facts, startling as they are, however, 
only faintly show the real interest which the 
people of tlie United States have in the ex- 
tinction of illiteracy and the extension of 
intelligence among the people of the South. 
There are other facts which enhance the 
danger a hundred-fold, and make the instant 
application of the only practicable remedy a 
duty of the most urgent necessity. 

1. Between the intelligence and illiteracy 
of this region there is an immense gulf. The 
one class comprises the land-owners and the 
other the land-workers. Socially, also, they 
represent the extremes. Poverty, degrada- 
tion, and dependence mark the line between 
the two. 

2. Perhaps two thirds of the illiteracy be- 
longs to a race which for nearly three 
hundred years has occupied a servile rela- 
tion, has been regarded as essentially in- 
ferior, has been rigidly excluded from all 
exercise or assertion of individual right or 
authority, and is forever distinguished from 
the dominant race by tlie fact of color. 

3. Tills race is increasing at a rate un- 
paralleled before, even in this land of marvel- 
ous growth, and has all the elements of 
future growth — poverty, enforced exertion, a 
simple and abundant diet, and a free, un- 
trammeled life. It is not possible that it 
should gain in wealth so fast as in numbers. 
It is hardly possible that tlie growtli in in- 
telligence should keep pace with its gain in 
power. If it grows in the future as it has in 
the past, tvilhin the lire of the child now born 
the colored race will be ia a majority in five 
Slates, and double tlie number of the whites in 
two of them. 

4. The intelligence of that section, instead 
of being evenly divided upon questions of 
national polity, is almost entirely to be found 
in one party, and that one bitterly hostile to 
the one in which by far the larger portion of 
ignorance is to be found. Because of the 
sentimenis from which this divition of parties 



arose, it is likely, in effect, to outlast the 
present generation. 

5. The proportion of wiiite illiteracy has 
not materially decreased during the past 
decade, while the actual number of illiterates 
has increased. 

6. The sentiment in favor of public schools 
in these States is not sufBcieiitly strong to 
enable them to meet and surmount this tide 
of ignorance, even if they were financially in 
a condition to do so, and a large proportion 
of the whites are still bitterly opposed to the 
education of the Negro. A bright, intelli- 
gent lady, living in one of these States, who 
is aii author of no mean powers, writing to 
me not many months ago, said, in all serious- 
ness, •' In my opinion the two worst things 
the South has to contend with today are 
fences and free schools. It will take more 
tlian we can raise to fence the crops and 
educate the Negroes.'''' She is a type, and a 
type of the best blood and brain too. 

7. The voluntary charity of the North can- 
not be expecied to last alwaj^s. During the 
past eighteen years it has been an enormous 
force in promoting the enlightenment of the 
South. More than a million dollars a year 
have been freely given by the people and 
churches of the North, and thousands of 
devoted lives have been consecrated to the 
work of education at the South. Hundreds 
of school buildings have been erected and 
thousands of the colored race prepared to 
teach their fellows. This bounteous stream 
cannot be expected to flow on forever. The 
Negro, as an object of benevolence, is shrink- 
ing out of sight. The enthusiasm that took 
thousands of our brightest and best of both 
sexes to the new mission-field which the war 
opened up is now dying out. Pity for the 
state of the slave is changing into apathy 
with regai-d to the freedman. The mo- 
mentum of tlie past will, no doubt, carry it 
somewliat farther into the future, but within 
a decade we may look to see this charity 
diminish by at least four fifths of its present 
volume. 

This, then, is the logical conclusion from 
all the existing facts : 

Unless the national government inter- 
vene, or a miracle be wrought, the present 
state of affairs at the South must grow 
steadily worse ; the debasement of the bal- 
lotorial power continue, and the evils likely 
to arise thereform grow hourly more and 
more imminent. 

Can we afford to permit this? Dare we 
allow it to be so ? When slavery and free- 
dom marked the line between the sections, 
the whole North rallied to the cry that " the 
nation cannot remain half free and half 
slave." Yet slavery was almost innocuous 
beyond the borders of the States where it 
prevailed. In national power the slave rep- 
resented only two fifths of the influence of a 
Northern white voter. Now, the ignorant 



30 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



colored man or unlettered poor white can, \»y 
his vote, bliiidlj' and ignorantly given, neu- 
tralize your influence in the government or 
mine. It is no longer a question of pity or 
philanthropj^, but one of safety. Dare we, 
as citizens of the country, permit the ele- 
ments that now mingle angrily and unwill- 
ingly in Southern life to remain as they are? 
The dominant sentiment of that section may 
be in favor of being let alone, though it is 
more than probable that euough of its best 
men and women have by tliis lime come to 
realize the danger that threatens tliem even 
more seriously than it does the natiou at 
large, to be willing to accept a remedy. 

Sumner said that by giving the Negro the 
ballot, we hatt " chained him to the chariot- 
wheel of (lur national progress." He was 
right, though in a different sense from what 
he meant to be understood. The nation be- 
gan the liberatiou of the slave to wound its 
enemy ; it must complete it to save itself. 
Whatever slavery may have been as regards 
the individual, it was a national error. Jt 
nourished ignorance and begat poverty. The 



poor white of the South was its product as 
well as the helpless slave. We put the bal- 
lot into the hands of both and made them 
co-equal kings with ourselves. We must 
now make it possible that they should rule 
wiselj'' — rule us wisely as well as themselves, 
for they are our rulers as we are theirs — or 
perish ourselves by their misrule. 

This is the danger. It is one that every 
citizen of the North or of the South, white 
or black, intelligent or illiterate, Republican 
or Democrat, has an equal interest in avert- 
ing. It is a danger that hourly grows tr.ore 
pressing, and demands from the people of 
the wlicle land that earnest and serious at- 
tention that Americans only give lo the 
most imminent public peril. The means by 
which the remedy may be applied are not 
within the scope of my assiginneut. and if 
they were the time would not permit o!' 
their discussion. In a more titling form I 
shall take occasion at an earl3- day to ex- 
press, in detail, my views upon that branch 
of a question now fairly launched upon the 
field of public thought. 



5. OPENING REMARKS. 



EEV. "W. F. DICKERSON", D.D., 

One of the Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. 



THIS seems to be rather an auspicious day 
for our American civilization, for our 
Christian institutions — a day when such men 
as are gathered here can be called from their 
various and varied duties to discuss topics 
of such unselfish importance, and from day 
to day an audience can be held hour after 
hour, session after session, to listen to them. 
It is, indeed, auspicious for our American 
institutions. I think, however, that we have 
given illiteracy too far a start ahead of us, 
and vve shall have to run pretty well and 
make pretty good time in order to catch up. 
We have got iy be united in this woi-k : we 
have got to stand shoulder to shoulder in 
this work; we have got to be self-sacrificing 
in this work. We must, then, enlist the 
sympathy, the support, the heart, hand, and 
brain labor of every man and every woman 
on this continent, in order that we maj' wipe 
out that foul blot of illiteracy. Dangers are 
increasing daily from our home-born illiteracy 
and from foreign. Juvenile illiteracy is in- 
creasing with every new birth in every sec- 
tion of our land ; adult illiteracy is increas- 
ing with every arrival of an emigrant ship 
from foreign ports. It is well that we have 
t.'ome together to consider this matter. While 
down in Mississippi the Episcopal Church is 
making an effort to see how it slmli begin to 



do this work, it is well we should meet at 
Ocean Grove, not merel}' to tell how to do 
it, but to begin to do it. There are to me 
two United States of America ; that is, two 
separate classes of States which I call unit- 
ed : One, the intellectual United States, and 
the other the political. If the intellectual 
United States shall do this work as thor- 
oughly, shall be as earnest, shall use as many 
means, shall enter into its work with as 
much zeal and earnestness as the political 
United States does, then this hard lot will 
be easily wiped out. It will take not sim- 
ply sentiments to do this, and yet we must 
create them. We must have these senti- 
ments, united sentiments — the people thor- 
oughly aroused in this matter — and yet we 
must make the intelkctual work of our peo- 
ple; and you bear in mind that when I say 
our people, I am speaking as an American. 
I am, ill every respect, an American, thor- 
oughly identified with all American institu- 
tions — American by birth and by training, 
by every thing. I am thoronghlj'' an American 
— if not absorbed I am completelj^ identified 
with America. So I say we must do this 
work because this land is becoming, has be- 
come, the theater of action for all the peo- 
ples, of all the races, from all quarters of the 
globe. Thej- are here, and atiU they are 



ILLITERACY IN THE UNITED STATES. 



81 



coming. I felt this morning, I feel now, it 
is a little late for us to be doing with the 
American Indian what was done by Ciesar 
with the Briton in the past. We must do 
this work as it comes to our hands and our 
hearts. 

In Switzerland they take us to see what 
is called there the " Meeting of the Waters," 
where the Rhone and the Arno come to- 
gether. It is a beautiful sight; there the 
Rhone, coming down from Lake Leman, 
meets at this point a mad, rushing, wild 
stream. Here they come together, but, 
seeming to dislike each other — for the one 
is red, while the other is blue ; the one steady 
and still, and the other swift and maddening 
in its rush — apparently disliking each other, 



they do not become one. I asked the guide 
if at any point they became one, and he said 
that far down, some live or six or eight 
miles, they became one. Drop by drop, they 
become included with each other. They 
finally become one stream, and go on into 
the Mediterranean. It seems to me that ail 
races from all quarters of the globe meet 
here, having heard of America, having heard 
what a grand climate we have, what noble 
hearts we have, how filled with sympathy, 
how we take every man into our souls, how 
that even the Cliinese come — some of them 
find out to the contrary. There may be some 
differences which may be repulsive for a time, 
but at last these many shall become blended 
into one harmonious and glorious whole. 



6. THE POOR WHITES OF THE SOUTH : WHO THEY ARE 
AND WHY THEY ARE. 



REV. L. B. CALDWELL, PH.D., TENNESSEE. 



YIRGINIA, Maryland, and Pennsylvania 
furnished a large quota of the original 
population of the Central Souih. This fact 
is applicable to the whole Soutii, except the 
coast cities and some of the adjacent low- 
lands. The area of the South may be 
divided into the lowlands or river bottoms, 
the low plateaus, and the mountain regions. 
The first of tliese has always, or until very 
recently, been held in large tracts, and 
worked by men of capital. The plateaus ly- 
ing midway between tlie bottoms and the 
mountains really lurnished homes for a mid- 
dle class. But the mountain region and the 
piney lowlands have been the home of tlie 
poor whites. Tliis mountain population is 
almost exclusivel}' Protestant. In fact, it is 
difficult to find a Roman Catholic in this 
origmal stock. The religious faith of this 
people may be indicated by the names they 
have inherited. Jolm Knox, Martin Luther, 
Asbury, Cook, Soule, and Bascombare house- 
hold treasures with this people. And with- 
out casting a reflection upon the political 
caste of any man, it is but just to say that 
these mountaineers were largely loyal to tlie 
United States Government. Here life may 
be lived — prolonged, at very little cost. 

Had the best blood of Virginia divided on 
this line, the result to-day would have been 
an absolute separation of the families, the 
rich and poor whites. These poor whites 
are not a people imported from the isles of 
the sea, or an outgrowth of fancy, but they 
are of us — our brothers. No better menial 
metal exists anj'vvhere than may be found in 



these cheerless cabins, where real comfort 
has never smiled. Fifty or seventy-five 
years of cheerless drill are not likely to stim- 
ulate a very high ambition for home deli- 
cacies. If you inquire why they are so 
poor and ignorant, I can only say they have 
never been lifted out of the rut of their 
fathers. They live in a climate where some- 
thing for their subsistence can be grown 
for nearly ten months of the year ; yet they 
are not utilizing this fact, and are poor. 
This mountain countr}"- is not a cheerless, 
valueless region, but is simply waiting the 
touch incident to culture. If the Mayflower 
had touched at Mobile, and the Pilgrims had 
worked their way inland from the Gulf of 
Mexico, tlie North-eastern States might have 
been to-day to this region what Alaska is to 
Southern Michigan. Here is a wealth of 
timber, which, for variety and quality, is not 
equaled on the continent ; and mineral wealtii, 
from coal to native gold, is scattered almost 
broadcast. Perhaps a single range of these 
mountains contains more bituminous coal 
than the world has ever used, wliile iron is 
too plentiful to be of value. Gold is not 
uncommon in the mountains of North Caro- 
lina, Georgia, and Tennessee. 

Unlike Utah, Nevada, and New Mexico, 
these mountains are very fertile. Yet this 
people is poor- — poor because they do not 
know how to be otherwise. But we ap- 
proach a more vital question: Why are tliey 
ignorant ? You must not overlook the fact 
that prior to 1865 the public-school system 
of the South was a failure, and since the.i. 



32 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



though improving, is practically but little 
better. It was not expected that the colored 
man, the slave, should be taught to read. A 
public-school sypt?m, practically carried out, 
would endanger this class of chattel. Hence 
the planter of the South had no need of the 
common school. He could furnish private 
instruction for his children until they were 
prepared for college, when they could be 
sent from home to finish their school train- 
ing. I am not here to reflect upon the man 
who could, or can, provide private literary 
advantages for his family. I would do the 
same to-day if it were within my possible 
limit. If possible, my boys should have all 
the pleasures of home life until fitted for the 
university. The planter could and did do 
this, so to him there was no call for the pub- 
lic school. This left no alternative for him 
who could not pay for private instruction for 
his family, nor send them abroad, but to 
grow them as he grew his mules — for manual 
labor. Do you begin to see the line which 
divided the families of the rich and poor 
white men of the South ? It has come to be 
a line of money and letters. While, per- 
haps, you may carry in your mind the results 
of the lack of common schools for a few 
3^ears, you must measure up to the number- 
less results following a dozen decades to 
reach the magnitude of the evils existing 
now. Do you blame them for this condition 
of things ? It was not in their power to 
avoid them. Put yourself in their place. "We 
have no home schools, and no money to send 
poor children away Irom home to be edu- 
cated. Do you say you would have pro- 
vided some way to educate your children ? 
Perhaps you would have done so. You may 
say that eighteen years of peace ought to 
have made a great change with this people. 
But before you prophesy great results, please 
weigh the effort which has been made for 
them. Without an effort you recall the 
stroke of that pen which cast into the lap of 
the nation a witless ward, 4,000,000 strong. 
It would have been cruel to have neglected 
this trust It was not in the providence of 
God that the American nation sliould shrink 
from such a responsibility. I need not recall 
to your minds how the money necessary to 
carry our those majestic plans flowed mto 
the coffers of the Churches. How the care 
of the Freedmen became the pulse of the 
nation. How grandly this work has been 
done, and is being done, it may not be in the 
power of words to tell. But the result of 
fifteen years has more than settled the ques- 
tion of the possibility of making men and 
women of this common chattel. Whatever 
their future as a factor of the nation may 
be, this one tiling is settled — they can learn 
and they can teach. I would not if I could 
divert a single dollar from the channel 
through which they have been flowing to 
build men and women from this crude ma- 



terial. Yet is it not passingly strange that, 
during all these years of magnificf nt giving, 
the poor whites of the South have been so 
entirely overlooked? Just as ignorant, as 
helpless, and as much a factor of the nation, 
yet until very recently left without aid, or 
even sympathy, by Church or State. It 
must be remembered that for those four 
dreadful years it cost more to be an American 
citizen in this region, either in "Blue" or 
"Graj'-," than it did to be a slave. Life was 
worth but little, and property less, for it 
was very uncertain whether you would pos- 
sess either on the morrow. Those who 
braved or dodged the danger and came 
through with a grip on life, could simply 
boast of the power to be. It may be easy to 
prophesy what might have been if certain 
condiii(ms had been met fifteen years ago. 
But, gentlemen, we are confronted by a liv- 
ing ghost, which will not down. We cannot 
ignore the fact that we have a vast native 
population of white persons in our midst 
who cannot write. I am not here to-day to 
plead for all the white population of the 
South, nor am I giving you a sketch of 
dreams. Early in July I spent a little time 
in the mountains of Tennessee and Georgia, 
and, as an instance, I will give you the facts 
as I gathered them. 

In one little district of Polk County, Tenn., 
I sought out one of the old citizens, who for 
eighteen years had been a justice of the 
peace. He had taken some interest in 
school matters. In his school district there 
were 102 children of school age, 12 of whom 
could write, and 20 of whom could read. 
Look an 87 per cent, in one district who 
cannot write, and 80 per cent, who cannot 
read. In this voting district there were 100 
voters, 20 of whom could read the ballot 
they cast. In the same district there were 
106 women, 15 of whom could read. And 
observe there was not a colored person liv- 
ing in this district. It is such a mistake to 
suppose that the illiteracy of the South is 
confined to the freedmen. 

The social natures of the freedmen induce 
them to make their homes where they can 
meet often. You may look for them in or 
near the cities or towns. Tliis town life of 
tJie freedmen has placed them where their 
school privileges have been far better than 
those of the poor white man living farther 
away. There are large sections of the South 
where the colored man is almost as rare a 
sight as in the rural districts of New En- 
gland. And there are places where ignorance 
prevails to an alarming extent. 

There are sections, which, for convenience, 
you may call the foot-hills, where the white 
and colored man have worked side by side. 
How the condition of the wiiite man is im- 
proved by his association with the Negro 1 

Of the 138 electoral votes cast every four ' 
yeans for the President of these United States, 



ILLITERACY m THE UNITED STATES. 



83 



tliese men have not a little to do in giving 
political and moral coloring to the same. 
Has it occurred to you that nearly three 
fourths of the votes required to elect the 
President of the United States are made up 
among this people? Do you realize that 
these unlettered men have very much to do 
in making up the 84 per cent, of the major- 
ity of the United States Senate, and are no 
inferior factor m determming the character 
of the House of Representatives ? Charge 
what you will of the illiteracy among the 
whites of the South to the system of Ameri- 
can slavery, yet it is a ftict we must meet, 
that almost all over the South illiterac)'' is 
increasing. Look at Kentucky, with 106.- 
000, and North Carohna, with 96,000 white 
persons, 21 years old and over, who cannot 
write. Tennessee gave birth and being to 
the first aniislavery paper published on this 
continent. Yet beautiful, fertile, liberty- 
loving Tennessee has to-day nearly 12,000 
white women v/'ho cannot write their names. 
These are the mothers of your coming 
statesmen, who hold, and will hold, so firm 
a grip upon the balance of political power in 
the nation. And this ratio of power cannot 
diminish, for this section of country will not 
depopulate while this climate retains so 
much of paradise. 

The States of Tennessee, Georgia, North 
Carolina, South Carolina, and Arkansas re- 
turn as unable lo write a net increase of 
while boys and girls, from 10 to 15 inclu- 
sive, in 1880, of about 30.000 above the 
same class in 1870. They will be men and 
women when the next record is made. Par- 
don me if I still ask your attention to these 
figures. In 1870 Alabama returns, as unable 
to write, 31,001 white women and 17,429 
white men, 21 and over. In 1880, in the 
same class, she returned 35,724 women and 
24,450 men. a net increase of illiterate men 
and women of 11,743. In ihe same class, in 
1880, Tennessee returned 71,786 white wom- 
en and 46,948 white men as unable to write, 
a net increase of illiterates, in ten years, of 
12,196. In the same period Greorgia had 
gained, in the same class, 9,271. And the 
proud old State of Kentucky had made, in 
the same decade, a net gain of the same class 
of illiterates of 18,172. 

In the presence of his foes, I would not 
let tlie wing of the American eagle touch 
the dust. But, in the midst of his friends, 
let me speak the truth. Has it occurred to 
you that in our proud America about 13 per 
cent, of our white boys and girls, 10 to 14 
inclusive, cannot write ? 

Please change your point of outlook again, 
and test our strength. New Jersey has 7.2 
per cent, of white women, 21 and over, wlio 
cannot write. But put New Jersey and Ala- 
bama together, and they have a population, of 
this class, of 20.3 per cent. New York has 
7.3 per cent, of white women, 21 and over, 



who cannot write. But put New York and 
North Carolina together, and they have, of 
the same class, 22.7. Take the 4.1 per cent, 
of Maine, and join it with South Carolina, 
and they have 24.9 white women, 21 and 
over, who cannot write. Another feature 
rendenng this question still more important 
to the nation is its geographical relation. 
This dark yet snowless belt lies in and 
stretches across the very heart of the conti- 
nent. Commerce, leaving the smoking fac- 
tories of New England, may reach the tea 
fields of Japan and China by a route nearly 
1,000 miles less than by the Golden Gate. 
And, again, the abundance of water-power, 
and absence of frost to interfere with ma- 
chinery, is a guarantee that our crude ma- 
terial will be manufactured at home. Un- 
less special attention is given to tiiis ques- 
tion, history will here repeat itself, and the 
per cent, of illiteracy will increase with our 
incoming manufacturing population. 

In the presence of these facts, we are forced 
to the question: What can we do for tliese 
people? Some one has said that public 
roads are great civilizers in any country. 
These we lack. There are splendid excep- 
tions, but in the mountain regions they are 
still trails about the same as when Boone 
and Crockett dodged or dared the Indian 
upon them. Settlements, ten miles apart by 
straight line, have no communication but 
by footman or rider. They could have good 
roads, but do not. But the great want is 
common schools ; not a system only, but a 
great, active, live fact of making men and 
women out of this crude material. It is not 
impossible to find some walking fossils yet in 
the South who oppose the common schools. 
It tends to destroy good breeding, you know. 
Yet these are going out of sight — to heaven, 
I suppose — as fast as a well-bred corner can 
be fitted up for them. The demand for a 
reading manhood is blotting out this folly — 
let it go. 

The college and luiiversity have their work 
to do in the South. But the great demand is 
for the improvement and invigoration of the 
common school. The South, or any coun- 
try, must have public schools, or fail. Can 
you sustain the river system of any country 
without the mountain springs and foot-hill 
rivulets? Neither can a healthy, vigorous 
life flow through any nation, giving green 
banks and fresli fields, but from a healthy 
common-scliool system. In the sections for 
which we particularly plead, school buildings 
(except when church buildings are used for 
that purpose) are a failure, and as devoid 
of comfort as the moon is of heat. Perhaps 
a taste for better school building must fol- 
low, not precede, a higher state of culture. 
In this region school furniture is almost un- 
known, and the seating is as crude as a rail. 
The per capita school fund is supposed to 
sustain the schools for five mouths in each 



34 



CHRISTIAN- EDUCATORS IN COXINCIL. 



section. But here there is often a difference 
between theory and practice. 

It might not be wise to invest large sums 
in permanent buildings, but in the normal- 
school work and that of practical teachnig. 
Too much cannot be said in favor of normal- 
school work for this country. Guard the dis- 
bursement of tills fund carefully. It must not 
become the patronage of any political partj'', 
but should be most emphatically a fund for 
the people, with this one distinct thought in 
its creation and use — to aid the poor to 
learn to read and write. As in the North 
and East, the higher institutions of learning 
will largely be sustained by funds which 
flow naturally through denominational chan- 
nels. But the public school cannot, must 
not, be denominational. But it is important 
that a fund be created at once, sufficient to 
sustain competent teachers all over this field. 
Take one more fact which you may gatlier 
from die United States census of 1870 and 
1880. We will make our estimate from nine 
of the States which lie in this dark belt — 
Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South 
Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, 
Kentucky, and Arkansas. By comparing the 
census of 1870 with that of 1880, you will 
find a net increase of illiterate white men 
and women, 21 and over, in those nine 
States, of a little more than 105,000. I do 
not, dare not, comment here further than 
simply raise the question : How long can 
this record continue with safety to the na- 
tional life ? You will observe that I have 
not taken into this count the 84.1 per cent. 
of colored men and the 86.5 per cent, of 
colored women in Alabama; the 87.2 of 
colored women and 76.4 colored men of 
Georgia; the 84.7 colored women and 78.2 
colored men in North Carolina; the 85.5 
colored women and 73 of colored men in 
South Carolina, and the 78.2 per cent, of 
colored women in Tennessee. But I have 
held my calculations closely to the conditions 
" of the poor whites of the South. Yet the 
fact that North Carolina can show that 33.4 
per cent, of her white women cannot write, 
does not give a correct view of the illiteracy 
of this class known as the " poor whites." 
If }^ou were to count out those who do not 
properly belong to this class, but belong to 
the planters and their families, and the whites 
who have recently moved into this country. 



it would, doubtless, raise the percentage of 
illiterates of this class, in the places men- 
tioned, to from 70 to 80 per cent, of their 
population. Yet they are not heathen, but 
blood of our blood. These are almost ex- 
clusively Protestant, and largely members of 
Christian churches, of whom the Baptists 
have by far the larger enumeration. With the 
illiterate immigration from the Old World, 
and the disintegrating effect of home igno- 
rance, even America cannot stand. Age and 
strength have not been the heritage of any 
nation which has neglected the education of 
her people. And America, never conquered 
and never to be conquered by a foreign foe, 
must take warning by the fate of nations, 
and care for her illiterates, or history must 
repeat itself in another national failure. 
New York may possibly become a little 
Rome, in the midst of an immense, ignorant 
people. Boston may become a Venice by 
the sea, but the glory of a nation cannot de- 
pend upon her universities alone — her masses 
must read. 

Where is the hand — perhaps by Provi- 
dence concealed — which shall remove this 
huge, this awful, wart from the fair brow of 
the Goddess of American Liberty? Were I 
a political party, were I looking toward the 
electing of the President of these United 
States in 1884, I would plant myself firmly 
on this plank — government aid for the illit- 
erates of this nation, such aid to be distrib- 
uted in proportion to the illiteracy of each 
State and Territory. 

Has it occurred to you that, say, nine 
tenths of this money would be distributed 
where three fourths of the electoral votes 
are created, and that these votes cannot fail 
of being largely influenced in favor of the 
party standing on this plank ? If ray political 
party were as sure of heaven as of success 
under such circumstances, I think I would 
cut the rope, throw out the ballast, and 
translate at once. If retrenchment be neces- 
sary, we can bear it anywhere better than 
carry this body of death. Let the postage 
remain as it was, let the harbors and rivers 
wear and waste for a while, and turn, if need 
be, the tide of internal improvements in our 
midst, which time must waste away, to' the 
eternal improvement of our boys and girls, 
which the friction of the ages can only 
bria-hten. 



On motion of Rev. Dr. M. E. Steteby, of New York, the National 
Education Assembly of 1883 adopted the following : 

Resolved, That the Constitutional duty to provide for the safety of the Republic is in 
full force at all times, and in the face of all dangers ; and that, in urging Congress to deal 
immediately and adequately with the problem of illiteracy, which has assumed appalling 
proportions, we are only asking it to meet this obligation — the discharge of which cannot 
be called a charity, the neglect of which must prove a fatal crime. 



III. NATIONAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 



1. THE YEAR'S WORK. 



REPORT BY PROF. C. C. PAINTER, 

Corresponding Secretary National Education Committee. 



IT is difficult to report the unreportable. 
An assiduous, and ardent lover may in- 
deed present an elaborate and exact statis- 
tical exhibit of the calls, visits, and presents 
made during a given time, all of which may 
possibly bear no certain relation to a real 
progress in his effort to gain the hand of his 
shy mistress. Something of the same diffi- 
culty embarrasses j^our secretary in the re- 
port expected of him to-day. 

To say that six thousand circular letter?, 
more or less, were sent to leading educators 
throughout the country for further distribu- 
tion by them, asking co-operation in this 
effort to secure national aid to common 
schools, and that seveial hundred letters 
have been received in reply, unanimous in 
their assurances of sympathy and help; 
that seveial thousand blank petitions have 
been circulated for signatures, and the names 
of from forty thousand to fifty thousand pe- 
titioners have been received and presented 
to Congress from twenty-three States and 
several Territories ; that eight different 
States have, either by formal joint resolution 
by the Legislatures, or petitions signed by 
members of the Legislatures and by the 
executive officers, asked the national Con- 
gress to grant the aid we seek ; that resolu- 
tions passed by conventions and associations 
of superintendents, teachers, and Boards of 
Education; by representative religious bodies, 
etc., etc., in various States; petitions by the 
trustees, professors, and pupils of many col- 
leges, — that enough of tliese have come up 
during the year to lumber the pigeon-holes of 
the committees to whom they were referred, 
and call fortli serious protest from some Sena- 
tors against their being spread out on the 
pages of the Congressional Record: all this, 
while it shows that a sentiment is growing 
throughout the entire country and is uttering 
itself in the ears of Congress, demanding that 
these things shall be done, while it gives 
great hope, yet does not enable us to mark 



any certain progress toward the consumma- 
tion we desire. 

Certain it is that when this sentiment be- 
comes general and outspoken, it will be 
respected and obeyed, but as yet the 
average Congressman regards it simply as the 
opinion of sentimental educators and philan- 
thropists, and not of the practical pohtician 
who constructs the platforms and runs the 
caucuses of his party ; a sentiment to 
which he may bow a profound reverence 
due to the character of tiiose who utter it, 
but, as yet, one he is not bound to obey, 
since it has not been taken up and expressed 
by the " boys " of the district which he rep- 
resents. 

That this report is made by the Secretary 
of the National Education Committee — acom- 
mittee created by the great assembly of last 
year, and of the broad constituency which it 
represented, of itself mai-ks a long step in 
advance of the previous year, when, as a 
member of the faculty of Fi.sk University, he 
was detached and sent on this special duty 
by the American Missionary Association, 
aided by certain persons in Boston, Philadel- 
phia, and New York, whose co-operatiou 
and pecuniary assistance were secured by 
General Armstrong, of Hampton, Virginia. 

The effort first made to enlist the moral 
and pecuniar}^ support of the societies now 
represented in this committee failed, and the 
work done by him was done under the embar- 
rassment of suspicions that he might be seek- 
ing some denominational end or advantage. 
Fortunately, througli the efforts of Dr. Hari- 
zell, the work was broadened, not in its nat- 
ure, conception, or aim, but in its constitu- 
ency, by the. organization effected last year, 
and has of necessity gained immensely by 
it. The aim first enunciated, and the meth- 
ods and purposes first adopted, have been, 
without modification, adhered to and urged: 
National aid to the common schools of 
the States and Territories distribut?' oi> 



36 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



the basis of illiteracy ; help immediate, and 
1 ot remote — from such sources as Congress 
may deem wisest, and so given as to stiiriu- 
late, not supersede, local effort, and so ad- 
ministered as not to interfere with local 
systems and methods, and yet under such 
supervision as will secure, in the most 
efficient way, with equal justice to all classes 
of citizens, the end sought; this was the 
object first announced, and the one to 
which we have strictly adhered during tlie 
past year. 

The facts showing the necessity of this aid, 
the appalling increase of illiteracy among the 
voters of the country, and tlie inadequacy, 
not alone of the schools already existing in 
many of the States, but the impossibility of 
sustaining a sufficient number, the practical 
limit of taxation having been reached — these 
facts were gathered and urged upon the at- 
tention of the public by distinguislied men in 
all parts of the country, whose co-operaiion 
was secured in one way or another. Tiiey 
were urged upon the attention of the Legis- 
latures of the various States, upon conven- 
tions and associations of influential men, 
wherever opportunity offered. They were 
spread before the pubhc through the press, 
and then, in various ways, gathered up and 
brought to bear upon the Committees of 
Education and Labor in two Houses of 
Congress, until action was secured. Two 
bills were reported lo the Senate supple- 
mentary of each other — one proposing a 
permanent fund from the sale of public lands 
and other sources, which will be available in 
the future ; the other proposing immediate and 
adequate temporary help from moneys already 
in the treasury, to be distributed, on the basis 
of illiteracy, to the Slates, and expended by 
them under the joint supervision of an 
official appointed by the State and a federal 
officer, also a citizen of tlie State, appointed 
by the President. 

In the House a bill was also reported by 
the Committee on Education and Labor, pro- 
posing temporary aid — $10,000,000 per an- 
num, for five years — to be administered by 
the State Boards of Education of the several 
States, making a satisfactory report to the 
Secretary of the Interior as to the expendi- 
ture of each year, as a condition of receiving 
its apportionment for the succeedmg year. 

These bills could not secure a place on 
the calendar which gave any chance of con- 
sideration by the last Congress except by a 
test vote under suspension of the rules — a 
vote which clearly foreshadowed their pas- 
sage had there been time to consider them. 

They had the right of way on the calendar 
when Congress died by constitutional limita- 
tion, and but for want of time there is 
little doubt that some one of them, or a 
new one with slight moditicaiions, would 
have passed. ' 

When the committees in both Houses had 



favorably reported bills in favor of such 
aid, there was no need of urging the ne- 
cessity of such legislation upon tliem, and 
so the work of the last was quite different 
from tliat of the previous year. 

Then it was with and betore the committees 
almost exclusively ; during the past year it has 
been with the members at large; therefore 
more scattered and more difficult. It has 
been the object of your secretary to find out, 
by a personal interview, the attitude of the 
leading men of the different sections toward 
this measure, and, wlien found to be hostile, or 
doubtful, to secure, if possible, the co-operation 
of some wise and influential man in the effort 
to convert him; and, if that wise and influential 
man happened to be one of his constituents, 
this fact has not been found to be hurtful, 
for it may as well be confessed that con- 
trolling motives and influences must be 
sought, for the average leader of his party, 
not always in the beneficial results of pro- 
posed legislation to the nation at large, but 
in the view the voters of Podunk, and White 
Oaks, and other voting precincts in his dis- 
trict are likely to take of it. 

The work of tlie year has been, therefore, 
of such character as to discover, not alone 
what the members of Congress think of the 
measure, but also what they think the voters 
at home are thinking about it, and the judg- 
ment formed by j-our secretary and other 
friends of this measure in position to judge 
is such as to give great hope that what we 
seek for will be done. Those who liad 
charge of, and the responsibility for, the 
National Education Association last year 
know how difficult it was to secure any, even 
respectable, not to say adequate, considera- 
tion from the members of the press. A 
single line or paragraph of common-place 
mention of our meetings, where a liorse-trot 
or walking- match commanded squares and 
columns. Some degree of urgency might 
secure the insertion of a brief article on the 
subject in some of the dailies if they were 
not too much crowded. This was about all 
that we were able to do up to the beginning 
of last year, but, during the past winter and 
spring, leading papers in New York, Phila- 
delphia, Boston, Providence, Hartford, Spring- 
field, Albany, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, 
Louisville, Washington, Baltimore, and in all 
the principal cities of the South, have, again 
and again, urged upon Congress the imme- 
diate and urgent necessity of national legis- 
lation in behalf of education. 

The literature publislied on this subject, 
outside of the speeches made in Congress, 
would make quite a large volume. An im- 
mense meeting, called in Cleveland, Oliio, 
last October, in connection with the annual 
exercises of the American Association, in be- 
half of this object, was addressed by ex- 
President Hayes, Pres. A. D. White, of 
Cornell University, and Dr. Curry, of Rich- 



NATIONAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 



37 



mond, Va. Their able addresses were 
printed, not alone in the papers of that city 
and widely circulated, but also by that As- 
sociatiou, and a large uiunber put at the 
disposal of your secretary for circulation. 

Early in November a large gathering was 
held in the chapel of Fisk University, Nash- 
ville, Tenn., addressed by Prof. Northrop, of 
Tale College, and Pres. A. G-. Haygood, of 
Ga., agent of the Slater Fund. Tiieir ad- 
dresses on this topic were printed and widely 
circulated through the South. In December 
an invitation was extended to Hon. John 
Eaton to address the Union League of New 
York on this subject, and tliis able and ex- 
haustive address was published by the 
League, and circulated directly by itself aud 
partly through your secretary among the 
leading men of the country. The Union 
League of Philadelphia, in Januarj'' last, in- 
vited the Hon. Commissioner of Education 
to repeat the address before its members, 
which also ordered an edition of the address 
for its use and circulation, and subsequently, 
so great was the interest awakened, invited 
Dr. Mayo, of Boston, and j^our secretary toad- 
dress it ou the same subject. Dr. Hartzell and 
Bishop Simpson also addressed the League. 

Meetings of a similar character and fully 
attended have been held in "Washington, 
Richmond, and other cities, especially in the 
South, wiiere the necessity for the action we 
seek has become so urgent that no oppor- 
tunity for giving expression to it goes unim- 
proved. 

If time allowed it might with truth be 
said that the secretaries and managers of 
these great societies, represented here to-day, 
have become missionaries of this new cru- 
sade, and have preached it whenever oppor- 
tunity has offered. Such men as Dr. Curry, 
Dr. Mayo, aud Pres. Haygood have gone up 
and down the land preaching it. 

The complexion of the next Congress is 
very greatly changed, and much of the work 
that has been done must be done over again, 
because some of the most earnest advocates 
of this measure are no longer members of 
the House ; but it is not believed that the 
prospect is less hopeful for our measure on 
this account. 

The conviction is gaining ground that the 
national government has a constitutional 
duty to discharge in this matter. Constitu- 
tional objections to such action are beginning 
to give way before the more logical and con- 
stitutional position that Congress cannot 
discharge its constitutional obligation to 
secure to each State a Republican govern- 
ment except as it secures to it the con- 
ditions of such a government. This can- 
not be done by bayonets and the arma- 
ments of war, but by the .school-master, who 
is a more legitimate and constitutional 
officer in a republic than is the recruiting- 
sergeant. 



Thought and discussion of this subject are 
leading many back to the ground, considered 
fundamental by the fathers and founders of 
the nation, that a republic can stand only in 
the intelligence and virtue of its citizens, 
and that the hrst and most imperative duty 
of goverinnent is to pn^vide for its own life, 
by providing these prime conditions of life. 
Eacli of tlie several Slates can and must say 
to the parents of its future citizen : "I have 
an interest in the education of your child, 
which I cannot allow you for any reason to 
jeopardize by neglect; if you are too poor to 
educate him, I will provide tiie school; 
if you are too ignorant, or so avaricious that 
you will not do it, I will compel it. He 
must not and .<*liall not grow up in such 
ignorance of his duties that he is of necessity 
a danger to the public safety." 

If the State must Uike this ground — and no 
sane man who believes in a Republican 
form of government can deny that it must, 
it seems to many a very short and not 
illogical step to the conclusion that the 
general government may say to the several 
States : '• I have an interest witii you in the 
education of your voters which I cannot 
and will not suffer you to neglect. I cannot 
haud over to others absolutely, and so place 
be3'ond my power and right to control, con- 
ditions which are essential to my own ex- 
istence. If you cannot qualify those whose 
votes are to affect my life for the duties vvitli 
which tliey are charged, then I will help 
you take such measures as are necessary 
to my own safety. If ^'•ou will not, tlien I 
must take your ignorant voters under my own 
supervision, and will either disfranchise them, 
or see that tiiey are qualified to vote." 

Whether it is wise for the general govern- 
ment to take the education of its citizens out 
of the hands of the several States, and do it 
by its own agents, is like the question 
whether it is wise for the several States 
to abolish the local school-boards, and 
attempt the work of education by State 
officials. The answer is obvious. Certainh' 
the local board can do it best. But if in 
any locality there is no school, either be- 
cause of tlie poverty of the people, or their 
unwillingness to educate their children, can 
any one doubt the right of the State to deal 
with the case as in its wisdom it sees best? 

The work which we begun is by no means 
completed, and its urgency is not less, 
but greater. There is increasing evidence 
that the end sought will be secured hj a 
patient continuance in well doing on our 
part. 

The moral support given by the organiza- 
tion accomplished last year was great, but not 
all that it might have been. In many ways 
it can be made more efficient, and it is hoped 
that your attention may be directed to this 
end. 

But it may be confidentially whispered, 



38 



CHBT8TIAN EDTTCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



in your ears, that llie pecuniary support 
from the organization was uolJiing at all. 
The plan proposed was found impractica- 
ble ; and, as a matter of fact, the effort did 
not receive the support it otherwise would, 
since those who liud supported it deemed 
it unnecessary to do so with all of these 
societies represented on its executive com- 
mittee. And so the support for the last 
ji-ear was: $500 pledged and secured by Dr. 
Strieby, of New York ; a like sum pledged 
by Gen. Armstrong: and $100 more from 
three gentlemen in Philadelphia, New York, 
and New Britain, Conn., makmg in all $1,100 
for the necessities of the year's work. 

When your secretary had paid out $250 
of this for necessary travel, printing, and 
postage, but htile was left to support him- 
self and family, and the work necessarily 
suffered from want of funds to do many 
things which must be done in all successful 
efforts to create, awaken, gather, and make 
efficient a public sentiment for the purpose 
of shaping national legislation. 

It is evident that a decisive hall has been 
called in the reduction of revenue. The pro- 
ducing interests of the country are manifestly 
opposed to reducing the duties on imports, 
and no statesman having the fear of his 
political enemies before his eyes, on the eve 
of a presidential campaign, wnll dare to pro- 
pose such a measure. Despite the reduc- 
tions effected last winter it is safe to say tlie 
surplus of the present year will be $100,- 
000,000, and this will continue as long as 
our laws remain as now. 

This surplus will pay off the only indebt- 
edness which the government has the privi- 
lege of paying before 1891, (the sum of 
$836,286,950,) in three and one third years; 
and so during the next five years, money 
would accumulate at the rate of $100,000,000 
per annum. 

What we are to do with this is a question 
which is beginning to trouble our politicians, 
as was evident in the recent conventions of 
both political parties in Pennsylvania ; as also 
to our publicists, as you may have seen from 



recent articles in the Philadelphia North 
American. 

Let it be the work of those represented 
here to-day, to convince our national Legis- 
lature, that this is a work more vitally re- 
lated to our national welfare than the open- 
ing of some stream for interstate commerce 
which is known only to the influential poli- 
tician who has a mill upon it, and one 
demanding immediate attention, iipon which 
some of this money may be wisely expended. 

We would deprecate as utterly ruinous a 
reckless tossing of large sums of money into 
the States which would demoralize their 
efforts to sustain their own schools. We 
would deplore any and all assistance or 
interference which would weaken the 
interest of the local school-district in the 
support and management of its own schools, 
as disastrous ; but, on the other hand, the 
reckless manner in which National and Slate 
legislation has thrust the ballot into the 
hands of millions of voters who have no 
proper qualification for the duties with which 
they are charged, and who have no ability to 
qualify themselves for them, has created 
an emergency of such vast and urgent pro- 
portions that no power short of tliat of the 
national government caii deal with it. 

We grant the difficulties and dangers of 
what is demanded but at the same time 
assert that those to be met are so much 
greater and more immediate, that the wisdom 
must be evolved which shall disarm them, 
or our republic will sink under them. 

The danger is from the ignorance and con- 
sequent vice of the voters; this ignorance 
can be enlightened alone by the school- 
master with adequate school facilities; these 
cannot be furnished by many of the States, 
and must be provided by the Nation at large. 
To do this wisely is the dutj^ and task of 
statesmanship. It is ours, as an association 
seeking this, to emphasize this necessity, 
and to demand of our representatives that 
they furnish a solution for the problem or 
give place to those who can ; for the solution 
must be found, and found speedily. 



2. NATIONAL AID TO POPULAR EDUCATION IN EUROPE. 



HON. J. P. WICKERSHAM, OF PEJSTNSYLVANIA, 

Ex-United States Consul to Denmark. 



"VrO one desires the Government of the 
IN United States to undertake the control 
of popular education. This duty is best 
discharged by the several States, each for 
itself 

Esteeming an edncatpd people the only 
safeguard of free institutions, patriotic states- 



men, at different periods of our history, have 
advocated the policy of granting aid to pop- 
ular education from the national treasury. 
This question has assumed special impor- 
tance at the present time. It has been of 
late much discussed in Congress and before 
the people; several of our Presidents have 



NATIONAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 



89 



expressed themselves strongly on the sub- 
ject, and the educational necessities of a con- 
siderable portion of the Union are such that 
the agitation will most likely grow in in- 
tensity until the issue shall be finally set- 
tled. 

Personally, I am opposed to any inter- 
meddling on the part of the general govern- 
ment with tlie practical work of popular 
educaliou. A National Bureau of Education, 
organized like ours at Washington, is an ad- 
mirable instrumentality for disseminating 
information concerning education, but any 
enlargement of its powers that would tend 
to remove the management of the schools 
from the hands of the people would be, in 
my opinion, a fatal mistake. Holding these 
sentiments, I am still warmly in favor of 
aiding, in a judicious way, by appropriations 
from the national treasury, the struggling 
school systems of the South. As a Northern 
man, a Penusylvanian, I am not particularly 
anxious for aid to our schools from the gen- 
eral government. As a fixed policy, I can 
see many objections to it. Here, at the 
North, we can maintain our own schools, 
and I am not at all sure it is not best for us 
to do it. But with the hope of betteriug the 
educational condition of tiie States of the 
South and giving them something like a fair 
start' in the work of establishing schools, 
with the hope of helping them lift them- 
selves from under a weight of ignorance 
tiiat must crush them down or reduce them 
to a state of barbarism, for the sake of the 
whole Union, which is strong only in the 
strength of all its parts, I am ready to give 
my voice for the appropriation of a generous 
sum by Congress to aid, while the existing 
necessity continues, that section of the coun- 
try which so badly needs such help. 

Popular education is regulated, to a greater 
or less extent, by the central government in 
every nation in Europe, except Switzerland. 
Next to Switzerland, the people exercise 
most control in the management of their 
schools in the British Islands, but elsewhere 
they have about as little to say respecting 
schools and teachers as they have respecting 
armies and soldiers. This policy necessarily 
determines, to a great extent, the source 
from which the schools obtain the funds 
that support them. Centralized systems of 
public instruction must be maintained and 
strengthened by grants of money from the 
central power, and such grants are made on 
a liberal scale by nearly all the nations of 
Europe. 

England has a complicated system of pub- 
lic instruction. Under the Act of Parlia- 
ment passed in 1870, and its supplements of 
1873 and 1876, there are schools in London 
and elsewhere throughout the kingdom 
called "Board Schools," organized very 
much like the American common schools; 
but elementary instruction in Eugland, up to 



the present time, remains mainly in the 
hands of societies established under Church 
auspices. The government has never at- 
tempted to make full provision for the sup- 
port of schools, but the policy of aiding local 
effort by grants of money from the national 
treasury was adopted as early as 1839, at 
which time £30,000 were set aside for this 
purpose. In 1846 the grant was £100,000, 
and in 1859 £836,000. At present there is 
at the seat of government in London an 
Education Department, with powers of a 
general character, and an efficient system of 
school inspection is in operation, extending 
to tlie denominational as well as to the 
board schools. Grants of money are made to 
every school inspected on certain conditions 
concerning the school premises, the length of 
time the school remains in session, the at- 
tendance of the pupils and their proficiency 
in study, and the kind of instruction im- 
parted. Account is also taken of the finan- 
cial ability of the locality or organization 
supporting a school. Tliese grants, in 1875, 
amounted to £1,356,746 195. 5d, of wliich 
£1,093,378 IBs. M. were given for instruc- 
tion, £34,491 13s. 2d. for building and fur- 
nishing school-houses, and £94,376 19s. 4c?. 
for the support of training-colleges or nor- 
mal schools for teachers. In 1882 the 
grants from the national treasury for educa- 
tional purposes in England and Wales had 
increased to the magnificent sum, expressed 
in our currency, of $13,749,315. The gov- 
ernment does not build a single school-house 
or manage a single scliool; the money is 
given to aid the local audiorities, to whom 
the practical work of education is intrusted. 

The elemeutarj'- schools of Scotland and 
Ireland are supported in much tlie same way 
as in England. In 1882 the grants of Par- 
liament for educational purposes in Scotland 
amounted to $1,736,160 ; and in Ireland, for 
the national schools alone, to $2,677,080. 

A Republic in name, France still retains 
the main features of the University of France, 
instituted by Napoleon in 1808, which cen- 
tralized in one vast corporation all the edu- 
cational institutions, from the primary school 
to the college, and all the teaching forces of 
the country. The French army is not more 
compactly organized, better officered, or 
more under the control of the central power, 
than the French system of public instruc- 
tion. The expense of supporting this great 
system is met partly by the nation at large, 
and partly by the departments and the com- 
munes into which France is divided. Every 
commune, which is the smallest territorial 
division, must provide its own school-houses 
and teachers' residences, but, where most 
needed, aid in the discharge of this duty is 
generously given from the national treasury. 
If a commune neglects or refuses to impose 
a tax for school purposes, the government 
takes its place in the performance of this 



40 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



duty ; but if it happens that a commune, on 
account of poverty, disaster to crops, depres- 
sion in business, or the devastation of war, is 
unable to pay a school tax, the government 
makes up the deficiency, so that no calamity 
is allow^ed to deprive French children of the 
privilege of an education. As much can 
hardly be said of all the children in the Unit- 
ed States. Like generosity is sometimes 
extended to a whole department, a territorial 
division corresponding to one of our States. 
The more fortunate sections of the country 
seem to approve the course of the govern- 
ment in helping the weak and allowing the 
strong to help themselves, and no one is 
known to have ever risen in the national 
councils to complain that such treatment is 
either unfair or unjust. Every wise father 
governs his household on this principle ; and 
to this extent parental government is of uni- 
versal application among the nations of the 
earth. 

The King of Prussia was crowned Em- 
peror of Germany at Versailles in 1871. A 
constitution for the Empire was adopted the 
same year. This constitution provides for a 
Minister of Public Instruction, and furnishes 
ground for certain general legislation on the 
subject of education. But there is no system 
of education in Germany common to the 
whole countrjr, although such a system has 
many advocates, and would be in accord 
with the present centralizing tendencies of 
the Empire. As it is now, each Kingdom, 
Grand Duchy, Duchy, Principality, etc., of 
which the Empire is composed, is left undis- 
turbed in the power it has long exercised of 
supporting and managing its own schools. 
Alsace and Lorraine constitute a notable ex- 
ception to this imperial policy. In these 
conquered provinces educational affairs are 
directed from Berlin through the German 
general; and, with a view to the healing of 
the wounds of the past, and attaching the 
people to the government that now rules 
them, special grants of money for school 
purposes have been made from the treasurj'- 
of the Empire. The old University at Stras- 
burg, which had been broken up and its 
buildings partially destroyed during the war, 
received at one time a grant of a million of 
Prussian thalers, and, in addition, there has 
been voted to it an annual allowance of two 
hundred and twenty thousand tlialers. Such 
an example of reconstruction deserves to be 
imitated in America. 

In Prussia, the general policy is to support 
elementary schools by local taxation and by 
fees paid by the pupils; but aid is gener- 
ously given to communities unable to main- 
tain schools for themselves in the manner 
prescribed by law and to special institutions 
of learning of various kinds. The money 
thus appropriated, in 1882, amounted to 
$10,000,000. Bavaria votes an annual sum 
for the salaries of teachers, pensions to su- 



perannuated teachers and the widows and 
orphans of teachers, and for other educa- 
tional purposes. In 1882 the sum voted 
was $4,000,000. In Saxony, in 1882, the 
government expenditures for education 
amounted to $1,500,000 ; in Wiirtemberg, to 
$2,000,000; in Baden, to $488,547. 

Of other European countries, according to 
statistics compiled by the Bureau of Educa- 
tion at Washington, the government of 
Russia expended, in 1882, for education, 
19,000,000 ; Austria, including Hungary, 
$8,800,000; Italy,. $6,000,000; Belcjium, 
$2,467,400; Denmark, $320,000 ; the Nether- 
lands, $2,500,000; Sweden and Norway, 
$2,900,000; Portugal, $500,000. Switzer- 
land makes annual appropriations for the 
support of the National Polytechnic School 
at Zurich, but her elementary schools are 
wholly supported by local taxation. 

The brief statement now made shows, 
first, that national aid to popular education 
is almost universal among the naiions of 
Europe ; and, second, that in distributing 
the money discrimination is almost every- 
where made in favor of those sections in the 
several countries which are the weakest 
financially, or which for any reason are un- 
able to carry forward the work of education 
for themselves. 

There is in the example of Euro'^ean 
countries, with respect to the management 
of their school affairs, much that is worthy 
of imitation in the United States ; but it 
must be added that their centralized systems 
of public instruction are ill adapted to the 
political condition of this country. It is, 
without doubt, best for us to continue the 
policy of iiitrusiing the control of our com- 
mon schools to the several States and to the 
counties and townships into which they are 
divided. I am well convinced that with us 
the more fully the management of the.«e 
schools is placed in the hands of the people, 
the stronger and the better will be our sys- 
tem of popular education. Cut off this 
root and most likely it would die. An in- 
dividual succeeds in acquiring knowledge, 
succeeds in business, succeeds in any under- 
taking whatever, in proportion as he de- 
pends upon himself, relies upon his own re- 
sources. A nation is but an aggregation of 
individuals, and that line of conduct which 
gives most strength to one will give most 
strength to the whole. In respect to popular 
education, the principle of local self-govern- 
ment is a vital one in a republic, and should 
be guarded with the utmost care. 

But as an exception to the general educa- 
tional policy which I deem best in a govern- 
ment like ours, as a step pressingiy demand- 
ed by the existing state of affairs in a large 
portion of the country, I think it would be 
eminently wise and just for Congress to 
make a contribution, or a series of contribu- 
tions, in aid of the feeble educational systems 



NATIONAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 



41 



of the South ; and, if I could have my way, 
I would make them iu a scale so liberal as 
to place a scliool within the reach of every 
child now sufi'ering for the want of instruc- 
tion. The same haud that struck down the 
rebellion should now be outstretched with 
kindliest help to supply the Southland's 
greatest need — the education of her people. 
That statesmanship is extremely narrow 
which votes money without stint to destroy 
and conquer, and has nothing to spare to 
repair the waste places and to heal the gap- 
ing wounds left by the storm. There is as 
much patriotism to-day in keeping an army of 
school-masters in the South for the purposes 
of peace, as there once was iu sending thither 
an army of soldiers for the purposes of war. 

Besides, national aid to the educational 
systems of the South is a matter of self- 
defense. A political body, like the national 
body, is weakened by tlie weakness of any of 
its members. 

If the South could bear her own burdens, 
if she could, uuaided, lift herself from the 
slough in which she struggles, it might be 
best to allow her to help herself; but her 
most courageous men see little hope of this, 
and work on in despair. With one accord, 
they declare that without help she will never 
be able to dissipate the dense ignorance that 
darkens the whole country and clogs every 
avenue to progress and prosperity. Says 
one who has been foremost among the 
school officers of the South, and who has had 
the amplest opportunities of knowing where- 



of he speaks : " We must educate or sur- 
render. We can become the Bceotia, the 
Ireland, the Poland, of the American govern- 
ment. We can die as to civilization, as 
many States have died before ; we can hang 
as a body of death on tlie back of the great 
republic." And then he adds, with fearful 
emphasis, "Does the nation desire this?'' 
So sad a condition of affairs in the Soutii can 
be bettered in only one way: prompt, gener- 
ous help from the United States goverument. 
As we have seen. Great Britain apportions 
her grants to schools so as to give most help 
to those districts whose necessities are great- 
est. France generously builds scliool-houses 
and pays the salaries of teachers in com- 
munes where tiie people are too poor to do 
it for themselves. Germany stretches out 
her broad hand to help even those wlio still 
iiate her in Alsace and Lorraine. A loss of 
crops or the devastations of war in a prov- 
ince of any country in Europe brings special 
aid to its educational mstitutions from the 
parent government. Let the United States, 
with a full treasury, be equally broad in her 
policy and magnanimous in her appropria- 
tions. The money thus given, like seed 
sown in good ground, will bring forth fruit 
a hundred-fold, in gratitude from the ben- 
eficiaries, in millions of children rescued 
from ignorance worse than death, in a new 
Union, greater, grander, more prosperous, 
more deeply rooted in tlie affections of the 
people than any of which by-gone patriots 
ever dreamed. 



CONDITIONS AND PROSPECTS OF TEMPORARY NATIONAL 
AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 



HON. H, W. BLAIR, 

United States Senator from New Hampshire. 



THERE can be no doubt of the power and, 
consequently, whenever the need exists, 
of the duty, of the nation to secure the edu- 
cation of the people so that they may intelli- 
gently enjoy and exercise the rights of 
citizenship. This power is inherent in the 
nation, and is its chief weapon of self-defense 
as well as of progressive life. It has been 
exercised from time to time, to a limited ex- 
tent, during nearly the whole period of our 
history, and has never failed to be pro- 
claimed by the most eminent patriots and 
statesmen as the corner-stone of republican 
institutions. If we are ever to make an}'- 
advance in this world some things must be 
taken as already proved to be true ; and 
therefore I shall on this occasion assume, 



first, that the sun shines ; and, second, that 
the nation has the constitutional power to 
give national aid of a pecuniary nature to 
common schools. 

I am willing to concede, for the purposes of 
this case, as the lawyers say, that the power 
should not be exercised so long as the family 
and the local communities in tlie States and 
Territories are able, without bearing unjust 
burdens, to properly educate their children, 
and do actually perform that duty. 

The real question, then, which arises be- 
tween the friends of wise measures for 
giving national aid to common schools, and 
those, if any there be, who oljject to such 
appropriations of the public money, is this: 

Is there such danger to national citizen- 



43 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



ship and national republican institutions, 
arising from the ignorance, present or pros- 
IDective, of the common people, as to justify 
the expenditure of the common funds, for 
the common good, in the support of common 
schools ? Elsewhere I have had the honor 
to give to the public such facts and argu- 
ments as seemed to me to be pertinent to 
the subject. The debate has proceeded now 
for at least two years, with a constantly 
growing conviction in the minds of the 
American people that such aid is indispen- 
sable to the safety and permanence of the 
repubhc. I believe that the overwhelming 
sentiment of thoughtful citizens is that such 
assistance must be given, and given now; 
that, in no matter of vital human concern 
was ever delay more needless or more 
dangerous, and that, in fact, whenever ihe 
Congress of the United Stales shall be again 
in session, the great practical question will 
be found to be not what shall be done, but 
how shall it be done ; not whether aid shall 
be given at all, but upon what terms arid 
conditions, and in what way, shall the most 
judicious and profitable application of the 
public money be made to the purposes of 
common-school education. 

Questions of practical detail are not, for 
the reason that the necessity that something 
be done is generally conceded, of any the 
less importance, nor are tliey less really 
obstacles to the desired result. 

How to frame a bill making the desired 
appropriation, so as to actually get a warrant 
which will draw the money from the treas- 
ury, and distribute its beneficent influences 
throughout the land, is a matter of supreme 
consequence ; for, if no bill whatever becomes 
a law, the eSect is the same, or worse even, 
than if it failed, because tliere was no admit- 
ted necessity for its passage. 

I believe that the expenditure of national 
money can only be made for national uses ; 
that it can be justified in support of common 
schools only because the national good re- 
quires the education of the national child 
who is to become the national citizen ; that 
the best possible way to expend the money 
of the nation is under the supervision of 
officers having a direct responsibility to the 
government; that, wlien the State and the 
nation expend money jointly for a common 
end, there should be a joint supervision there- 
of; that, when tlie States maintain school 
systems adequate in extent and quality for 
the proper education of the cliildren wlio are 
to become citizens of the State and the na- 
tion ahke, the nation should not interfere; 
when the State fails, from any cause what- 
ever, so to do, then ihe nation, ex necessitate, 
must interfere in self-defense, and interfering 
thus is no trespass upon State rights what- 
ever, for the right of the State to educate 
the children within her borders is not an 
exclusive right. It is a duty, but not a duty 



even which it alone can discharge. It is a 
national right, the duty to exercise which 
arises when the State fails to discharge it. 
It is a right and duty which both State and 
nation owe to the rising generation. It is 
their joint tribute to the high destinies of the 
human race, and a tribute which must be 
paid by them, either severally or jointly, to 
avoid the destruction of both, and in no otiier 
way can tlie nation fulfill its guaranty of a 
Republican form of government to the States, 
or secure that form to herself. 

Therefore it is that while I believe the prop- 
er way to secure the best application of nation- 
al money to the education of the children of 
the whole people is by direct supervision and 
control by the nation wherever, in States 
and Territories, no schools are provided by 
local authorities, and by a joint supervision 
of State and national officers — the functions 
of both being united in the same person, so 
as to avoid division of eflbrt whenever it is 
deemed desirable, and thus the compensation 
of these underpaid officials, being increased 
by their combined salaries so as to secure to 
their high talents and lofty devotion some- 
thing above the starvation wages for which 
they now, in the most needy States, wear 
out their invaluable fives: that I also be- 
lieve, if it is necessary in order to secure the 
great end iiself, to place the national money 
in the hands of the States, in trust for its 
proper expenditure for the common good of 
both nation and State, and of the children, 
who are both the nation and the State which 
is to be ; that the nation has the right to 
make the appropriations and expend them 
directly through the authorities of the States. 

This is no surrender of the right of the 
nation to educate her children within her 
utmost borders. It is, rather, the exercise 
of that right tiirough local instrumentalities. 
It is as though the nation should see fit to 
exercise its powers of defense against foreign 
or domestic violence through State officers 
and armies, and by State laws and State 
forms. But it might be necessary to do so 
even under these disadvantages rather than 
not at all ; and I am rejoiced to say that the 
developments of the last few years, in those 
portions of the country where national aid to 
schools is chiefly required, demonstrate, in 
my belief, the general, though not universal, 
determination of the people and of the local 
powers, sacredly and honestly, to apply all 
obtainable moneys to the removal of the 
great curse of illiteracy from the masses of 
the people. 

Such is my own sense of the exceeding 
gravity of the situation that I am in favor of 
any reasonable bill which appropriates the 
money rather than that no bill be passed. It 
is not a case which admits of delaj^, nor of 
long deliberation as to the precise method in 
which the remed}^ is to be administered. 
Money is the 6-pecific for the disease, and the 



NATIONAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 



43 



raaia thing 13 to get the medicine into the 
patient — the body poHtic at large. It is not 
so much matter whether the national doctors, 
or the State doctors, or men holding diplomas 
from both institutions, give the dose, as that 
it be taken, and in allopathic quantities. 
Fortunately, the disease is one where the 
patient is ready to receive this particular 
medicine from almost any hand. I should 
prefer that the institution which furnishes 
tlie medicine should have something to say 
in its administration, but this nation is too 
sick of the wounds and bruises and deadly 
diseases which grow out of the all-prevail- 
ing and increasing ignorance of the common 
people, to justify much delay or haggling 
over secondary questions. I will venture 
further to say, however, that I believe all 
danger of conflict in administration between 
State and Federal officers is purely imaginary, 
and is born of prejudices of the past that 
sliould have no place in this new era in 
which the interests, the hopes, and the 
destiny of the individual and the nation, of 
the county and of the continent, are, and 
should forever remain, "one and insepa- 
rable." 

But, sir, this great assemblage of ability, 
stirred by devotion to a great cause, will be 
useless as a glorious sound in the air unless 
it stimulates the performance of practical 
things, which shall result in actual legisla- 
tion for appropriations from the national 
treasury. 

The prose and poetry of our theme should 
be just this: The common scliools and an 
appropriation. Education, physical, indus- 
trial, intellectual, and moral, is the primal 
necessity; and money is the one agency 
which can purchase this, like every other 
good thing. The direct effort of every man 
who comprehends this great emergency in 
the affairs of the people is indispensable, in 
order to bring home to the legislators of the 
country the will of the masses, that these 
appropriations be made. I have never con- 
versed ttve minutes upon the subject of na- 
tional aid to common schools with a voter, who 
was not also a member of Congress, without 
listening to expressions of strong approval 
on his part. The people desire it, and are 
surprised that anyone should oppose it. But 
this universal sentiment unvoiced is like the 
electric forces of all nature locked up by 
insulation. You must let this sentiment 
loose, and make the electric connection with 
the hands and hearts of your Senators and 
Congressmen. These public servants are al- 
ways ready to obey the general, well de- 
fined, and unmistakable will of their con- 
stituents. The appropriation of national 
money directlj"- to the support of schools has 
never been made. It is not strancre, then, 
that unusual and emphatic and comprehen- 
sive manilestations of the public will should 
be waited for before the necessary legisla- 



tion can be obtained ; nor that the represent- 
atives of those sections which expect com- 
paratively small direct benefit should be 
sensitive and careful as to terms and condi- 
tions and results for win'ch their constitu- 
ents will hold them strictly responsible. 
There should be at once a grand eflbrt in- 
augurated all along the line, and throughout 
the whole country, to secure an expression 
of the public will upon the appropriation of 
national aid to common schools. 

All the powers of the press, the pulpit, the 
platform, and of personal intercourse, should 
be called into full action. If every editor in 
tliis country who believes in it would write 
one strong editorial, and every clergyman 
would preach one powerful sermon, and 
every lecturer, who could appropriately, 
would utter one eloquent sentence for na- 
tional aid lor common schools within the 
next six months, any reasonable bill would 
pass Congress by a two-thirds vote at the 
next session, and be at once heartily ap- 
proved by the President. 

But the most powerful weapon of all is. 
the right of petition. In a free country, to 
petition is to command. The people should 
exercise it. Every citizen of the country 
should send his memorial to the Congress 
which he has created, demanding national 
aid to common schools. This convention 
can initiate and conduct a movement which 
shall bring to every member of the House 
and Senate the prayer of his constituents for 
national aid to common schools. Let circu- 
lars be prepared, and every one of the ten 
million voters in the United States be given 
the opportunity to make his petition for na- 
tional aid to common schools. Let every 
religious and educational organization, every 
association of meclianics and laborers and 
craftsmen of every degree ; every order, so- 
ciety, grange, and institution, whether of 
learning, benevolence, or of industry, in the 
land, whose members believe that general 
education is essential to the public welfare, 
urgently memorialize Congress for national' 
aid to common schools. Get tlirough tlie 
cordon of politicians, and appeal to the 
hearts of the people. Deal with this, not aa 
a partisan question, but as one of self-pres- 
ervation. 

Common schools and republican institu- 
tions are convertible terms. Without them, 
ueitlier parties nor politicians could be; for 
popular rights, to subserve whicii these ex- 
ist, cannot survive in the poisonous niglit 
of ignorance which is threatening our Ijeloved 
land. Whatever thing is neglected, let not 
this be neglected. Let the people utter 
their voice. Especially let the cry come up 
from those wlio most need help. But here 
we must remember that tiie patieni does not 
always know tliat he is sick. Tiierefore, let 
the ph3'sician cry out. The philantliropist 
and ihe educator who is silent commits high 



44 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



crime. If the missionary spirit of the couatry 
would for a single session concentrate on 
this great movement to procure a few mill- 
ions of national aid to public schools, what 
an impetus would it not give to its own 
great work 1 This is the natural duty of the 
clergy, of educators, of the press, and of 
every man who loves his country or cares 
for the welfare of mankind. 

The prospect of success depends upon tlie 
performance of the conditions of success. If 
proper efforts are made to bring the pressure 
of the public interests and of the public will 
to bear upon public servants, national aid 
to common schools will be secured. This 
subject can no longer be made a party issue. 
Opposition has been developed when it 
could have been least expected, and support 
has sprung up where only the poet could 
have hoped for it in his dreams. Nothing 
has so demonstrated to my own mind that 
we have in truth entered upon a higher ca- 
reer, and that He liath indeed made all 
things new. Wliere I had hoped for sym- 
pathy and leadership in tiiis great movement 
for aid to common schools I have found the 
remnants of effete statesmanship and the 
narrowest forms of local littleness when 
home necessities did not exit^t. Where I 
feared that the might of generations of anti- 
republican and class influence would prevent, 
there I have found anxious and hearty co- 
operation. The time is not far distant when 
the common school will be the new peculiar 
institution of the South. Give her people 
and her statesmen a chance. Once the 
common school acclimated there, and her 
vast rural populaiion educated and elevated 
by the diffusion of universal knowledge, and 
the great South will be the conservator of 
our institutions and tlie sheet-anchor of 
human liberty. I believe that no party 
there will oppose, but all will ardently ad- 
vocate, national aid to public schools. Tliere 
is more danger of inconsiderate and unfor- 
tunate opposition from tlie rich and power- 
ful North. But no political party, North or 
South, ought to live which fails to support 
this measure. I believe that no public man 
in any party can long survive the emphatic 
condemnation which opposition to national 
aid to common schools will receive from 
the American people. I trust that this will 
not become a political issue, because I be- 
lieve that no party, and least of all the Re- 
publican party, can afford by its oppof-ition 
to array the national instinct of self-preser- 
vation against it. Yet, when the test vote 
was taken last session upon tlie Sherwin 
bill, the passage of whicli would have been 
of more benefit to this country than all the 
legislation since the Act of Emancipation and 
the amendments which secured the suffrage, 
the record of ayes and noes made me sick at 
heart. 

Tlie Republican party cannot repeat that 



record in the next Congress, and survive 
the next Presidential election. Some, how- 
ever, voted adversely to the bill, not up- 
on its merits, but because they desired op- 
portunity for discussion and for amendment. 
There be those in tlie Republican party who 
must imbibe from some outside source new 
life and new ideas, or that party will not 
long survive. 

We hear much about standing with our 
faces to the morning, but it is yesterday 
morning with too many men wlio have tiieir 
official grip on the destinies of this countr}'. 
It is time to learn something new and to 
move forward. But it is hard for one gen- 
eration to rise to an appreciation of the op- 
portunities and to the performance of the 
duties which belong to their successors, and 
it is too mucii, perhaps, to demand of the 
generation which destroyed slavery that it 
should fully reconstruct the foundations and 
edifice of our liberties. Yet the fathers 
wrote tlieir perfect charter and model in the 
cabin of the Maijjlower, and we are but 
called upon to apply the great principles of 
civil and religious freedom which they enun- 
ciated in the administration of the law, and 
to fortify them forever by tiie intelligence 
and vinue of the people. We have no ex- 
cuse and cannot escape " the deep damna- 
tion of the taking off" of republican institu- 
tions, if we permit the children of American 
citizens to come to the control of a govern- 
ment, based upon the knowledge and virtue 
and disciplined mental powers of the people, 
incapable of discharging the functions of 
sovereignty, and the ready prey of despotic 
power. 

Soon or later the American nation will 
educate its cliildren. Now is a crucial 
emergency, and we are being weighed in 
the balances. Shwll we be found wanting? 
What record are we making as we pass 
away ? 

The public finances may not always so 
easily permit the expenditure as now. A 
generation of children are educated by an 
average of five years' common-school life, 
and tw-o generations thoroughlj'' taught in 
the common branches of knowledge through- 
out the whole land; and the people in every 
locality having once tasted of the heav- 
enly gift will never afterward fail to secure 
to their posterity the inestimable blessings 
of universal education. The work once 
done will remain forever done. To perform 
it is our highest duty, our God-given oppor- 
tunity, and our glorious privilege. 

This assembly will answer for itself. Be- 
fore the snow flies success will be assured 
or neglect will have rendered defeat unavoid- 
able. 

Every thing will depend upon the demon- 
stration of popular sentiment which shall be 
manifested to the next Congress of the 
United States. The work hitherto done has 



NATIONAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 



45 



been great and invaluable. But the new 
Congress is composed largely of new men, 
and nothing can be taken for granted. 

I believe that this assembly will perform 
its whole duty, and that within two years 
the great work will be accomplished. If we 



fail, miserably fail, and if those who come 
after us likewise miserably fail, the time 
will come in free America — then, alas! no 
longer Iree — when cursed shall be the night 
when it is said within her borders that a 
child is born. 



4. THE VOICES OF FOUR PRESIDENTS. 



GEN. GRANT, in his message, announcing 
tlie ratification of the Fifteenth Amend- 
ment, says: 

I would call upon Congress to take all 
measures within their constitutional power 
to promote and en<;ourage popular education 
throughout the country, and I call upon the 
people every-where to see to it tliat all who 
possess and exercise political rights shall 
have an opportunity to acquire knowledge 
which will make their share in the govern- 
ment a blessing and not a curse. 

President Hayes, in 1880, repeats and en- 
forces a former recommendation: 

The means at the command of the local 
and State authorities are, in many cases, 
wholly inadequate to furnish free instruction 
to all who need it. This is especially true 
where, before emancipation, the education of 
the people was neglected or prevented, in 
the interest of slavery. Firmly convinced 
that the subject of popular education deserves 
the earnest attention of the people of the 
wliole country, with a view to wise and com- 
prehensive action by the Government of tiie 
United States, I respectfully recommend that 
Congress, by suitable legislation, and witii 
proper safeguards, supplement the local edu- 
cational funds in the several States where the 
grave duties and responsibihties of citizenship 
have been devolved on uneducated people, 
by devoting to tlie purpose grants of the 
public lands, and, il' necessar}', by appropria- 
tions from the treasury of the United States. 



President Garfield, in his inaugural, uses 
these emphatic words: 

All the constitutional power of the nation 
and of the States, and all the volunteer forces 
of the people, should be summoned to meet 
this danger by the saving influence of uni- 
versal education. 

President Arthur, in his message, adds his 
voice to that of his predecessors : 

There is now a special reason why, by 
setting apart the proceeds of its sales of pub- 
lic lands, or by some other course, the gov- 
ernment should aid the work of education. 
Many who now exercise the right of suffrage 
a-e unable to read the ballot which they cast. 
Upon many who had just emerged from a 
condition of slavery, were suddenly devolved 
the responsibilities of citizensliip in that por- 
tion of the country most impoverished by 
war. I have been pleased to learn from tlie 
report of the Commissioner of Education that 
there lias lately been a commendable increase 
of interest and effort for their instruction ; 
but all that can be done by local legislation 
and private generosity should be supple- 
mented by such aid as can be constitution- 
ally afforded by the national government. 
I would suggest that if any fund be dedi- 
cated to this purpose it may be wisely dis- 
tributed in the different States according 
to the ratio of illiteracy, as by this means 
those locahties wiiich are most in need of 
such assistance will reap its special ben- 
efits. 



The f(jllowing letters were received while the Assembly was in session; 



Hon. Cornelius Hedges, Superintendent 
of Public Instruction, Montana, says: 

I am, in a moderate degree, favorable to 
national aid to education, but not to take the 
place of State responsibility, which will in- 
sure variety and healthy emulation. I think 
the South ought to educate the blacks as well 
as the whites. Tiie chief reward would be 
theirs, and they, too, by all the strongest con- 
siderations of justice, should bear the burden; 
but rather than not see it done at all, or to 



have it done the sooner, would favor a mod- 
erate grant to extinguish illiteracy — would 
have the government found and support the 
best university in the world, with the best 
man in the world at the head of each depart- 
ment. The government should only aim to 
provide a balance-wheel and distributory res- 
ervoir in our school system. 

I am a true friend to the Negro, but he 
must understand that elevation is to be his 
own work, and a hard, slow work it will be. 



46 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



Hon. Daniel L. Pratt, of Michigan, says : 
While I am in favor of liberal appropria- 
tions by Congress in aid of our public schools, 
I am in favor of the States disbursing the 
money appropriations. I think the work can 
be done more economically and efficiently by 
the States than by the general government. 

I tliinlc our country is suffering from the 
want of an educated conscience ; and that 
any system of education that neglects sys- 
tematic instruction in the principles of sound 
morality will be sadly defective, and do very 
liLtle to elevate the illiterate masses. 



The Hon. William F. Welcker, Superin- 
tendent of Public Instruction, Gal., writes: 

I presume no one would recommend the 
declining to receive such aid if the general 
government finds itself able and willing to 
extend such assistance; but in my judgment 
it sliould be given to the State authorities to 
dispose of without interference from Wash- 
ington ; and witii the sole proviso that the 
money should be expended for the salaries of 
primary and grammar-school teachers. School- 
houses, apparatus, and other appliances 
should be furnished by the local authorities. 



The Hon. G. J. Orr, Commissioner of Ed- 
ucation, Georgia, says; 

My delay in writing you has been brought 
about by the hope that I might see my way 
clear to do all the work expected of me here, 
and still render the general cause the service 
which you ask at my hands. Recent devel- 
opments here have satisfied me that this can- 
not be accomplished. I am compelled, there- 
fore, reluctantly to decline your invitation. 

I send you a preamble and resolutions 
unanimously adopted by the General Assem- 
bly of Georgia, and approved December 13, 
1882, which I feel represents the sentiment 
of our people in this State: 

Wliereas, As a result of the late war, the 
colored people of the South were set free and 
made citizens ; and 

Whereas, The wliite people themselves were 
greatly reduced, many of them to a state of 
destitution very nearly as extreme as that of 
tlie colored people; and 

Whereas, The facts herein recited have ren- 
dered it impossible, for the time being, for 
this State to make adequate provision for the 
education of our youth ; and 

Wliereas, Wide-spread iUiteracy, conjoined 
with universal suffrage, have put the institu- 
tions of the country in peril ; therefore be it 

Resolved, by the General Assembly of Geor- 
gia, That we hail with pleasure the movement 
now being made in the Congress of the United 
States to raise a fund for distribution for a 
term of years among the States in aid of pop- 
ular education, the distribution to be made 
upon the basis of illiteracy. 

Resolved, That the proposition to have this 
fund applied under State laws, and by the 



regularly constituted State authorities, to the 
support of common schools, normal schools, 
and other agencies, for securing an adequate 
corps of well-qualified common-school teach- 
ers, meets our hearty approval. 

Resolved, That our Senators and Represent- 
atives in Congress are hereby requested to 
use their best endeavors to secure the passage 
of an educational bill which shall be liberal 
in its monetary provisions and well guarded 
against improper federal interference in the 
educational affairs of the States. 

Resolved, That as our now limited fund 
is applied to the education of all children, 
without discrimination as to race, so shall 
any fund which may be furnished by Con- 
gress be applied with equal impartiality. 

Resolved, That his Excellency, the Gov- 
ernor, is hereby requested to have copies of 
these resolutions made out and forwarded to 
Washington at once, to be laid before both 
Houses of Congress at the commencement of 
the approaching session. 



Hon. Thomas B. Stockwell, Commissioner 
of Education, Rhode Island, says: 

I desire to assure you of my deep sympa- 
thy with the purposes of the meeting, believ- 
ing the question of popular education to be 
the vital question in American politics, using 
that word in its best sense. The life of the 
nation, always inseparably connected with the 
education given to its children, is, just at this 
juncture, owing to the two great currents of 
illiteracy which emancipation and immigra- 
tion have turned in upon us, only to be pre- 
served by the most extended and united ef- 
forts in all legitimate directions. 



Hon. Hugh L. Thompson, Governor of 
South Carohna, says : 

I realize fully the importance to the whole 
country of securing prompt and liberal ap- 
priations from the national treasury to be 
used in aid of public-school systems, and to 
be expended on the basis of illiteracy. I have 
given much thought to this subject, and I see 
no other way of averting the evils witli which 
illiteracy threatens our free institutions. 



Hon. E. H. Fay, Superintendent of Puljlic 
Instruction, Louisiana, writes: 

I hope the action of the Assembly will be 
such as to impress upon the general govern- 
ment the necessity of doing something for 
education in the South. Mr. Blair's bill (Sen- 
ate, 151) I like, save one or two objectionable 
features. Any bill proposing to aid the cause 
of education in the States must trust the State 
authorities solely, under legislative restric- 
tions, to disburse the funds impartially, as 
they do their own State funds, and must not 
provide for an army of commissioners to act 
in conjunction with State authorities. If tiie 
States are unworthy to be trusted, they are un- 
worthy to receive aid from the government. 



NATIONAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 



47 



5. THE NATION THE ONLY PATRON OF EDUCATION EQUAL 
TO THE PRESENT EMERGENCY.* 



BY HON. J0H2Sr EATON, LL.D., 
United States Commissioner of Education. 



NEARLY twenty years have passed since 
the declarations of universal freedom ; 
yet tiie slavery of ignorance remains with all 
its perils. Joy is increasing in all the land 
that man no longer has property in his fellow- 
man ; yet we must confess that the evils 
threatened by African slavery are only partly 
averted. The millions in ignorance are not 
free as American liberty must make free ; 
their ignorance invites vice, crime, and petty 
demagogism to become their masters, and by 
ruling them to assail the foundations upon 
which rest the very citadel of our liberties. 

The colored persons, ten years of age and 
upward, unable to write, as returned by the 
late census, number 3,220,878, or a number 
equal to the entire population when the 
original thirteen States were first united un- 
der one form of government. The foreign 
white population, of ten years of age and 
upward, unable to write, number 7(53,620; 
and the number of native white persons of 
the same age unable to write is 2,255,460. 
T.ie total number, ten years old and upward, 
unable to write, in all tlie States and Terri- 
tories and the District of Columbia, is 6,239,- 
958, showing, as compared with similar 
figures from the census of 1870, relatively 
an advance of three per cent, in intelligence, 
but an actual gain in the number of illiterates 
of 581,814, in spite of all the educational 
activities of the intermediate ten years. 

Notwithstanding this mass of darkness, 
we are among those who believe in all the 
possibilities of our destiny for good for our 
posterity and for the other nations of tlie 
earth ; but we know that a house divided 
against itself cannot stand. Intelligence and 
virtue, trained in the love of freedom, are 
always ready for its defense against all the 
hosts of ignorance and evil. But here the 
irrepressible contlict remains, and it is the 
part of wisdom to consider how it may be 
terminated by measures of peace and moder- 
ation, and not involve future generations in 
a catastrophe more bloody and calamitous 
than our own civil war. 

We offer no Utopian schemes. "We do 
not come as destructives purposing to tear 
down every thing; we do not propose to ar- 
rest the growth of our institutions. On the 
contrary, we invoke greater activity on the 
part of all the agencies that enligliten, or 
mold, or preserve society for good. 



Among the foremost of these to which we 
turn with assured expectation is the family; 
and where outside of the borders of America 
is there a larger proportion of families to the 
whole population? Where have its better 
aspirations equal opportunity? All the pos- 
sibilities of American citizenship are before 
its every child. How many hallowed home 
influences guard the life of infancy, train its 
earlier activities, mold its power to high pur- 
poses and noble action ! But, alas 1 how 
many homes are broken up by the death of 
father or mother, or by the weakness or 
criminality of the parent, and childhood's 
tender years exposed to the perils of orphan- 
age, or thrown into the midst of vice and 
crime. Society, in its benevolent action, 
already counts these cliildren in localities by 
tens of thousands. That noble effort of 
Brace and his coadjutors, in }''Our city alone, 
has taken over sixty thousand from the perils 
of city streets to the safeguards of country 
homes. Our reform schools and orphan 
asylums give most appalling testimony to 
the aid our home-life requires, and show the 
disproportionate increase of neglected chil- 
dren. All the efforts of organized and en- 
lightened charity are not equal to the demand. 
Amid vital statistics, Rachel every-where 
mourns her infant cliildren. Nearly half 
the children die in infancy, and come not to 
tlie chances of future good or evil among 
men. 

Near the family is the Church, that other 
Divine institution, established for man's en- 
lightenment in his duties to God and his fel- 
low-man, and for the conservation of tlie best 
interests of society. For this great institu- 
tion, too, we invoke greater activity, and we 
believe that the American Church is not 
hindered, but quickened, to greater power by 
its separation from tlie State. We believe, 
thereby, it occupies an ideal position, toward 
which its wisest adherents the world over 
would have it move as the sphere in which 
it may most serve man and honor God. 

Where else has the Church greater respect 
or more power over the consciences and 
lives of the people? Where else has its 
press or pulpit greater influence? Wliere, 
besides, in the same length of time, has it 
garnered a richer literature ? Where are its 
schools on the Sabbath more effective ? And 
yet, according to the last well-authenticated 



♦Delivered at opening of the National Education Assembly for 1882, at Ocean Grove, N. J., August 8. 



48 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



figures, their membersliip numbered only 
about seven millions and a quarter; and yet, 
if none but youtti attended these scliools, 
tliere should be in them from fifteen millions 
to twenty millions. Yet in what nation 
under the heavens have the schools of the 
Church of all grades more freedom, and 
gained sucli endowments, or given promise 
for greater future triumphs? 

Some claim for the Cliurch such exclusive 
control over education, that we must look 
more carefully into the possibilities of pro- 
vision for tills great emergency by denomi- 
national agencies. 

The separate schools of theology, includ- 
ing Catholic and Protestant, number 142, 
having 633 learned professors, 5,242 stu- 
dents, and have invested in buildings and 
grounds, $6,221,607. The productive fimds 
of the Protestant schools amount to $8,537,- 
683, and yield an income of $576,897. All 
the investments in all forms for instruction 
in the professions of law and medicine bear 
no comparison to these figures. 

But the Churches have achieved far greater 
results in ilie provisions of college instruction 
for men and women. Of these institutions 
announced as belonging to one or the otlier 
of the denominations of Christians, Protest- 
ant or Catholic, tliere are 438, with 4,543 
professors, and 60,947 students. The value 
of their buildings, grounds, and apparatus is 
$31,898,510; the amount of their productive 
funds, $23,403,945, yields a reported income, 
with tuition fees, of $3,068,554. In this 
connection it is interesting, however unsat- 
isfactory, to remark that the productive 
funds invested for the education of women is 
not one filtietii of tlie amount similarly in- 
vested for the college education of men. 

Of that other grade of institutions estab- 
lished for secondary instruction, such as 
high-schools, academies, and preparatory 
schools, there are reported under denomiua- 
tional control, 837, with 4,205 teachers, and 
73,770 students, owning in buildings, 
grounds, and apparatus, $10,779,334, and 
having in productive funds, $1,684,359. 

In these three classes of schools, those of 
theology, and those tor secondary and supe- 
rior instruction under denominational con- 
trol, we have the grand total of 139,826 
students, and an investment in property and 
productive funds amounting to $82,195,728. 

But we must pass to another great and 
special work of the Churches. Rejoicing in 
tlie American Sabbath for man's rest and 
freedom to worship, the several religious 
denominalions acknowledge it to be their 
special responsibility on that day to preach 
the Gospel of man's redemption. Learning 
and eloquence may well rejoice in the power 
of their pulpits. Tiie multitudes whose at- 
tention they command in places of worship 
no cursory glance can number ; but our pur- 
pose requires a nearer view. 



We have not the data expected from the 
great census of 1880, but on the supposition 
that tlie ratios for that decade may be sub- 
stantially the same as for the previous one, 
(1860-1870,) the following statistics will be 
sutliciently accurate for our argument. 

Great as is the Sabbath worship on the 
first impression, allowing that there are now 
28,170,000 sittings in the religious edifices 
of all tlie various denominations, there would 
be required 21,830,000 additional sittings to 
accommodate the total population of 50,000,- 
000, which, at an average expense of $12 
per sitting, would cost $261,960,000. To 
supply the preachers required, at the usual 
average of 1 to 375 persons, there would 
need be an addition of 58,213 clergymen. 
Now, should the Churches undertake to give 
these men a preparation of only three years 
at the present rates of aid, and with present 
facilities, it would cost, over and above all 
that the young men could do for themselves, 
at the rate of $100 a year, $17,463,900; and 
their first year's salary as preachers, should 
they be able to live on an average of $500, 
would demand for its payment $29,106,500. 
The total of these three items for the supply 
of the preached Gospel to all of our fifty 
million people would cost $308,530,400. 

Another special means of promoting re- 
ligious progress is the circulation of religious 
books, newspapers, and especially the Holy 
Bible. Great and excellent as is this service as 
now rendered, how many hundreds of thou- 
sands of souls are unreached by either agency 1 
It would require a circulation of 10,000,000 
religious papers to furnish one to each family. 

When the spirit of American civilization 
invites religious organizations to a work so 
vast, so far beyond their present means and 
efforts, so out of proportion to all that they 
are undertaking, would it not border on 
cruelty or absurdity to demand of our 
Churches, as some would do, that they 
should assume entire control of the education 
of the people in all its forms, under all con- 
ditions ? But would the idea of those who 
advocate exclusive Church direction of edu- 
cation hmit that great work to a few, or to 
the ruling classes, or to tliose who could 
pay ? Could the friends of the Church con- 
sent to an idea so consistent with the illit- 
eracy and degradation of the masses ? 

We believe the New England fathers 
wisely sought a better way. Studying pro- 
foundly in the light of the Divine word all 
the data in human experience that they 
could command, after prolonged struggles 
they reached their well-known principles of 
liberty and right of conscience, person, and 
property. They also became profoundly 
convinced that the preservation of these 
principles which they so dearly cherished 
could be assured for the future only by the 
training of the young to whom they were to 
be committed, and that this education could 



NATIONAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 



49 



only be made universal and sufficient for a 
free people by tliat other institution, the 
State, which they cherished as divine, while 
announcing its total separation from the au- 
thority of the Church. They welcomed all 
voluntary action by the family and by the 
Church, and we; have seen how conspicuous 
were the results attained; but they wisely 
committed to the State, in which only re- 
sided the power that could touch all the 
people and tax all the property within its 
borders, the guarantee of the education of 
all the children. So they expected the fam- 
ily to teach justice, so they expected the 
Church, by all its moral power, to enforce 
justice between man and man; but tliey re- 
served the guarantees of this justice to the 
civil organization. Thus they expected tlie 
family and the Church to do their utmost for 
the education of society ; but the final as- 
surance, the absolute guarantee, of this edu- 
cation, supremely necessary to the continu- 
ance of free institutions, they laid in the very 
foundations of the civil government. Their 
conceptions and practices have so commended 
themselves to American lovers of liberty that 
iu every State and in every Territory that 
has any organization in law there are legal 
provisions for the public education of the 
children. The schools of the people, the 
common schools, are justly and wisely re- 
garded with the profoundest interest. States- 
men and publicists the world over have not 
looked in them in vain for the sources of 
many of the excellences of American life. 
May it be always and every-where true of 
them, as the great "Webster was able to tes- 
tify to an English inquirer. After remarking 
that lie had been familiar with the New En- 
gland system of free scliools for more than 
fift}' years, and avowing his hearty applause 
of it, he continues: 

"I owe to it my own early training. In 
my own recollection of these schools there 
exists, to this moment, a fresh feeling of the 
i^g^ sobriety of the teachers, the good order of 
the school, the reverence with which the 
Scriptures were read, and the strictness with 
which all moral duties were enjoined and 
enforced. In these schools, or it may be 
partly by my mother's care, I was taught the 
elements of letters so early that I never 
have been able to remember a time when I 
could not read the New Testament and did 
not read it. Many moral tales and instruct- 
ive and well-contrived fables, always so al- 
luring to childhood, learned by heart in these 
schools, are still perfectly preserved in my 
memory. And, in my own case, I can say 
taat, without these early means of instruction 
ordained by law, and brought home to the 
small villages and hamlets for the use of all 
their children equally, I do not see how I 
should have been able to become so far in- 
structed in the elements of knowledge as to 
be fit for higher schools. 



"In my opinion, the instruction communi- 
cated in the free schools of New England 
has a direct effect for good on the morals of 
youth. It represses vicious inclinations, it 
inspires love of character, and it awakens 
honorable aspirations. In short, I have no 
conception of any manner in which the pop- 
ular republican institutions under which we 
live could possibly be preserved, if early 
education were not freely furnished to all, by 
public law, in such forms that all shall gladly 
avail themselves of it." 

He proceeds, in language almost pro- 
phetic: 

" I may be permitted to add, that, in my 
judgment, as tJie present tendency of things 
almost every-where is to extend popular 
power, the peace and well-being of society 
require, at the same time, a corresponding 
extension of popular knowledge." 

The favorable side of this public-school 
system cannot be contemplated without 
gratification. In every State, by the provi- 
sion of the State university or agricultural 
college, the ladder of learning, witli one foot 
standing in the gutter, invites every child, 
step by step, by a free course to the iiighest 
instruction. The conception of the tlieory is 
an honor to the human mind. None are ex- 
cluded ; every one is invited to some measure 
of instruction, be he sound iu health, or be 
he feeble-minded, or deaf, or dumb, or blind. 

What blessings are offered to tlie poor I 
Here is a family struggling for subsistence, 
and has no money to pay a penny for the 
instruction of its children, that perliaps num- 
ber four; one, of a sound mind, goes to the 
public school, and, if he has the capacity, 
through the collegiate course, and is then 
capable of high trusts and responsibilities ; 
the second, an idiot, is taken to the school 
for the feeble-minded, and becomes self- 
supporting; the third is blind, and the State 
offers tlie school for the blind ; the fourth is 
deaf and dumb, and the State offers the 
school and the nation the college at Wash- 
ington. It is a glory of American law that 
wliat is left for these unfortunates else- 
Avhere to charity, here has the certainty of 
public administration. 

Why should we not, glancing over the an- 
nual column of educational work, congratu- 
late ourselves that there are 48 schools of 
law, with 3,134 students; 120 schools of 
medicine, with 14,006 students; 364 uni- 
versities and colleges, with 59.594 students; 
that tliere liave been given for education in 
the last ten years over $61,000,000 by 
private individuals of wealth; and that an- 
nually'' there are nine millions in attendance 
upon the public schools, and an annual ex- 
penditure for these schools of eighty million 
dollars from the public treasury? 

But we must not pause here ; we must 
look at the reverse side. New England, to- 
day, has but one college student, male and 



50 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



female, to every 167 families; whereas, at 
the end of the first 23 years of New Eiitrland 
history, or when there were 20,000 souls in 
the settlements, tiiere was one university 
graduate to every 40 families. May we not 
say that hence came such wisdom in laying 
the foundations of those States ? When will 
the educated classes anywhere attain the 
same relation to the whole body of the 
people ? 

But against this attendance upon the pub- 
lic schools there is tiie non-attendance of 
5,754,759. Allowing that these odd hundred 
thousands are in private schools th.at are not 
reported, there remain 5,000,000 of children 
of school age untaught. To furnish these 
sittings in buildings, at the usual average of 
$20 per sitting, would cost a hundred mill- 
ions in monej' ; to furnish them teachers 
would require an increase of 30,000 to the 
teaching corps, and a single year's prepara- 
tion of these teachers at the average rate in 
New York would cost ten millions of dollars. 

The pay of these 30,000 additional teachers 
for one year of ten months, at the rate of 
$32 a month, which is about the average 
throughout the country, would amount to 
.$9,600,000. Add to this the items lor prep- 
aration and school-house sittings necessary 
for these non-attending school children, and 
you have the grand total required for the first 
year of $120,000,000. 

There has been an attempt to raise a laugh 
at the proposition of the Hon. Senator Logan 
to appropriate $60,000,000 in aid of educa- 
tion, but I give you here figures which can- 
not be invahdated, showing that his propo- 
sition falls $60,000,000 short of the sum 
which would be required to furnish, for a 
pingle year, all our school children now 
without school sittings and teachers. Mr. 
Senator Blair, in his examination of this 
point in his recent speech, considering that 
Texas has a school period of only six years, 
states that, if the school life were properly 
lengthened in that and other States, the 
number reported without school accommoda- 
tions and without teachers would be increased 
by three millions. 

In our cities we are accustomed to expect 
the best teachers, best school-houses, iDCSt 
methods, and best supervision; but laws 
making attendance obligatory are wanting in 
more than half of tlie States, and, on an av- 
erage, two fifths of the children are not en- 
rolled in the schools. Here are forced upon 
us the terrible problems encountered in older 
civilizations and more dense populations. 

Those deficiencies, we must note, moreover, 
are not equally distributed throughout the 
entire country, but are mainly concentrated 
in the Southern States, where the late war 
left its most disastrous effects. The white 
people were impoverished, and the colored 
people entered upon their liberty in total 
destitution. The setting up of the public- 



school system was one of the crucial tests 
of the revolution that was transpiring in the 
affairs of the Southern people, and was most 
obnoxious to the whites. AH their ante- 
cedent notions rose up against it, but in 
spite of the prevailing poverty and indiSer- 
ence or opposition, the public-school idea 
gained ground. 

The fifteen States and the District of 
Columbia where slavery prevailed, having a 
legal white school population of 3,899,961, 
had 2,215,674 enrolled in schools, and with 
a colored school population of 1,803,257, 
had 784,709 enrolled, and expended $12,- 
475,044. This money, it should be remem- 
bered, is divided pro rata without distinction 
of color in all States excepting Kentucky and 
Delaware. In the former State the colored 
people have had for educational purposes the 
benefit only of the income of the tax upon 
their own property and polls, and specified 
fines and forfeitures. By an act of the last 
Legislature, however, provision was made for 
submitting to the people the question of 
adding a two-mills tax upon propertj' for 
educational purposes, uniting this and the 
amount from the previous provisions for 
education, and distributing the whole pro 
rata per capita. In Delaware $2,500 are 
now appropriated for the colored schools. 
What has thus been accomplished in these 
States for education may be taken as a 
pledge of what they will do. 

In considering the local necessities of the 
South, embarrassed by the ignorance of the 
colored population, it should not be forgotten 
that tliere are now conducted, for the benefit 
of the colored people, 44 normal schools, 
with 7,408 students; 36 schools for secondary 
instruction, with 5,237 students; 15 univer- 
sities and colleges, with 1,717 students; 22 
schools of theology, with 800 students ; 3 
schools of law. whh 33 students; 2 schools 
of medicine, with 87 students, and 2 insti- 
tutions for the deaf, dumb, and blind, with 
122 students. 

These institutions for higher instruction of 
colored youth are mainly due to the bene- 
factions of benevolent Christians ; and it is 
claimed by the several denominational 
agencies at work that they have expended 
in this direction some ten millions of dollars. 
In the same regions it is known that the 
nation expended through the Freedmen's 
Bureau, in behalf of education, $5,262,511. 
Here, too, the great Peabody benefaction, 
managed with the greatest skill in educating 
both blacks and whites, has expended 
$1,191,790, and now the Slater fund of a 
million is provided to give greater efficiency, 
especially for the edticatiou of the blacks. 

In these late slave States the fam ly, the 
Church, and other agencies for the enlighten- 
ment of society have been rehabilitated, and 
substaxitially restored to their normal condi- 
tions of activity ; and yet the census shows 



NATIONAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 



51 



that there are in these States 1,676,939 white 
persons, and a total of whites and blacks of 
4,741,173, ten years old and over, who can- 
not write. 

To which great agency can you assign the 
additional burden of educating these illiter- 
ates ? To the family ? How many families 
of the most cultured and best conditioned 
are unable to educate their cliildren as in 
former times, or as they desire; and among 
those colored people the least supplied with 
schools, how widely is the family a minus 
quantity as a factor in promoting the im- 
provement of the 3^oung? Shall we then 
look to the Church for the light to overcome 
this darkness ? How inadequate are the 
resources of the Church in the South to 
supply sittings and preachers for the special 
function of declaring the Gospel? How 
generally are they in debt? What appeals 
are they compelled to make to their friends 
in other quarters ? Shall we turn, then, 
thirdly, to the States, already impoverished 
and loaded with taxes and embarrassed by 
questions of repudiation? In reply, let me 
invite attention to the fact that the taxable 
real and personal property reported for 
assessment in those States is given in round 
numbers as $3,379,000,000, while the real 
and personal property in New York and 
New Jersey alone is worth nearly an equal 
amount, or $3,292,000,000. What would 
the people of these two States say to an ad- 
ditional assessment on their property suffi- 
cient to erect all the additional school-houses 
and supply all the teachers for the instruc- 
tion of the millions of iUiterates in the 
South ? All are familiar with the sensitive- 
ness in the several Northern States to the 
assessment of any additional tax for educa- 
tion or any other purpose, and there the 
total wealth as assessed is reported as $13,- 
095,000,000, or nearly ten billions more 
than in the South. 

It should be remembered, in addition to 
the short period in which schools are al- 
ready taught in the South, that there are 
2,702,835 children of school age not enrolled 
for instruction. Take another comparison : 
Charleston, South Carolina, now levies a tax 
of three mills on a dollar ; but to furnish 
the children of that State a fair approach to 
tlie instruction given those in Massachu- 
Sftts would require a tax on the property of 
the State of nearly three cents to the dollar! 
This the friends of education In Massachu- 
setts or any other State would liesitate to 
propose in their own case. 

In view of these facts need we ask, why 
have the benevolent of all classes, the 
friends of humanity, of order, of law, of 
progress, been so profoundly moved by 
anxiety? Why have the consciences of so 
many been urging the provision of educa- 
tion for these people? One thing is clear: 
tliese earnest patriots have sought no harm 



to either race ; tliey iiave not acted in an- 
tagonism to any of the great agencies for 
the reformation and blessing of society, the 
family, or the Church, or the cities or States 
of that region, but their aim has been to 
relieve burdens that would paralyze these 
agencies. They have labored to secure for 
the youth of the South that instruction and 
training which by precept and example in- 
spire to a higher and better life. Tljey be- 
lieve profoundly that lust and avarice and 
anger creep in the dark jungles of man's 
ignorance. 

In their studies of social science they 
read the story of "Margaret, the mother of 
criminals," wherein they learn that the neg- 
lect to care for that single Juke family livmg 
on the outskirts of a New York village re- 
sulted in a marvelous multiplication of 
criminals and paupers. Mr. Dngdale traced 
1,200 descendants. Of these 280 were 
adult paupers, and 140 criminals and of- 
fenders, guilty of seven murders and of num- 
erous thefts, highway robberies, and nearly 
every offense known in the calendar of 
crime ; and cost society for their support or 
punishment $1,308,000, '' without reckon- 
ing," as Mr. Dugdale observes, " the cash 
paid for whisky, or the entailment of these 
evils upon posterity, or the incurable dis- 
eases, idiocy, and insanity, growing out of 
their debaucheries, and reaching further 
than we' can calculate." 

Much has been said and written of the 
effect upon the increase of the comforts of 
life and the increase of wealth by that educa- 
tion which tends to develop a sound mind in 
a healthy body, and intelligent, healtliy, 
honest men and women. This material re- 
sult of right education may be set forth in 
numerous ways. All political economists 
recognize it. 

I must not pause to elaborate these points, 
but supposing (1) that the labor of an illiter- 
ate is increased in value 25 iper cent, by 
teaching him to read and write, 50 per cent, 
by fairly educating him, and 75 per cent, by 
giving him a thorough training; and (2) that 
the average value of the labor of literates 
is the same as the average wages paid em- 
ployes in manufactories, then the following 
computations give sound conclusions. 

Bj' the census of 1880 the number of per- 
sons of 21 years and upward in the Souih- 
ern States who were unable to write was 
2,984,387. If 75 per cent, of them should 
be taught to read and write, it would in- 
crease ithe value of the labor of 2,238,290 
persons 25;per cent. The present vahie of 
their labor is. approximate!}'-, $248 a year 
each. The increase of value would be $G2 
a year per capita, a total of $138,773,980. 
If 15 per cent, of the illiterates should be 
fairly educated, it would increase the value 
of the labor of 447,658 persons 50 per cent, 
or from $248 to $372 a vear each. The 



52 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



total of tliis annual increase ■would be $55,- 
509,592. If the remaining 10 per cent, of 
illiterates should have the value of their la- 
bor increased 75 per cent, by being thor- 
oughly trained, the industrial value of 298,- 
439 persons would be raised from $248 to 
$434 a year each, a total of $55,509,654. 
By adding the three totals just given, it is 
seen that the increase which would come to 
the industrial value of illiterates in the 
Southern States would be, were they edu- 
cated as indicated, $241,727,220 a year. 

A similar computation may be made for 
the entire country. The average annual 
wages paid by manufacturers is $345. The 
number of persons 21 and over unable to 
write is 4,204,263. By teaching 75 per 
cent, of these to read and write, the labor of 
3,153,272 individuals is increased in value 
from $345 to $431 a year, a total gain of 
$271,181,392 each year. The gain which 
would come from educating 15 per cent. 
(830,654) of the illiterates so that their labor 
would be increased 50 per cent, in value 
would be $108,787,815. The same amount 
would be gained by so training the remain- 
ing 1 per cent, of illiterates that their labor 
would be of 75 per cent, more value; and 
the total annual profit to the country by the 
conversion of illiterate into educated labor 
would be, according to the premises as- 
sumed as a basis of computation, $488,757,- 
022 a year. 

Need I go further to indicate that educa- 
tion is a most profitable investment for both 
labor and capital? 

Amid these masses of figures you will not 
expect me to give in greater detail the sta- 
tistics showing the depreciating influence of 
ignorance upon agriculture, upon the me- 
chanic arts, upon commerce, upon all the 
great activities by which society lives and 
moves, nor will you desire me to trace in 
detail the share that ignorance pure and 
simple has in the degradation of the pauper 
classes, in the increase of criminality and its 
cost, or the propagation of disease and the 
insecurity of health and life ; but I cannot 
dismiss this vast ignorance without a word 
with reference to its possible political evils. 
Omitting any reference to the influence of 
illiteracy during minority or any bearing of 
the illiteracy of the female adults, the late 
census shows us that there is a great army 
of 1,870,216 adult males or voters who can- 
not write, an army nearly double that ever 
in the field during the late deplorable civil 
war. You will certainly excuse me from 
any delineation of the horrors of the devas- 
tation that might follow their united and 
concentrated efforts against the peace and 
order of society. I simply call your atten- 
tion to what may be the injurious effect of 
their silent action at the polls. The mem- 
bers of our respective political parties be- 
lieve iQ. the Tightness of their principles and 



seek to make their appeal to tlie reason and 
consciences of the people ; but the figures 
disclose the alarming fact that in eleven 
States these illiterate voters outnumbered 
the votes east in the last Presidential elec- 
tion by either of the political parties. Tims, 
should they unite under any strong, impas- 
sioned, successful leader, they would have 
absolute control of legislation and offices in 
those States, and of the election of twenty- 
two members of the United States Senate. 

Again, running the column of these alarm- 
ing figures, and taking into account the votes 
of tlie two political parties in the last Presi- 
dential election, we find that in all but five 
of the States in the Union there are enough 
of these illiterate voters to have reversed 
the result of the election in each of these 
States. The press, the pubhe mind, are oc- 
cupied with questions of tariff, questions of 
capital and labor, questions of corporations 
and private rights. Do they sufficiently con- 
sider what material these ignorant masses 
offer for the destructive revolutions that 
have occurred in connection with these 
questions in older civilizations and imder 
other forms of government? Does the 
press consider that none of its information, 
none of its pleadings, none of the considera- 
tions it presents can be read by 4,943,451 
persons ten years old and over, and that for 
them its voices of warning and instruction 
fall on deaf ears ? 

Before passing from this class of consid- 
erations j'ou will pardon me for reminding 
you that many of our intelligent people, dis- 
gusted, as they say, by the ignorance and 
corruption they meet, show a disposition 
not to participate in political action ; and 
that generally the more ignorant can be 
rallied to do what their leaders desire. In 
the light of this general fact I beg you to 
turn to the "Tribune Almanac" for 1882, 
and, after adding up the columns of votes 
cast, draw out of its total the number in 
each State whose votes were not cast or 
were not counted in the last election : you 
will find the startling result that these votes 
not cast or not counted make a grand total 
in all the States of 3,353,186; or more than 
three fourths of the number who voted on 
either side, and as a rule in each State suffi- 
cient, or two or three times enough, to have 
reversed the election. 

No summary of educational points from a 
national view should omit the condition of 
education in the Territories. Here we are 
confronted with all the Indian problems, 
which could be speedily solved if the 60,000 
Indian children should be educated in the 
conduct of life for a few school generations. 
In the Territories, too, are the children of 
the 30,000 Alaskans without legal provision 
for their education. Here, too, is the large 
Spanish and substantially foreign popula- 
tion of New Mexico, with little or no pro- 



NATIONAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 



53 



vision for iiistniction in the English lan- 
guage or American thought. Here, too, are 
the cliildren of the 150,000 polygamists, in 
spite of the Edmunds Act said to be in- 
creased this year by 15,000 immigrants from 
foreign counlries. 

Another question that is springing up all 
over the land is, what can be done by edu- 
cation in the absence of apprenticeship, and 
the progress of society to give skill to handi- 
craft? For this purpose essential modiSca- 
tions in methods and appliances must be 
made and will cost large sums of money. 
Yet they must come. This country, like 
the rest of the world, is moving steadily to- 
ward industrial training. Besides, in cities, 
in addition to the absence of millions of 
school age already noted, there are multi- 
tudes below that age who are so exposed to 
death or disease, or the formation of evil and 
destructive habits, that public action will be 
required in self defense, if for no other rea- 
son. Already this necessity has been rec- 
ognized in France, and so-called maternal 
schools have been provided, in which there 
are now 600,000 children from two to six 
years of age. 

Passing from point to point thus abruptly 
along these outline views, opening here and 
there into vast vistas that we have no time 
to study, aUow me to ask, What are you go- 
ing to do about these questions? Will 3'ou 
leave affairs to float on as they are, trusting 
that there is an overmastering power in the 
form of our government to prevent the evils 
so destructive to society in a monarchy or 
aristocracy? Before trusting ourselves en- 
tirely to this dangerous fallacy, it may not be 
amiss for us to remember that before we 
have passed far beyond the first century of 
our existence as a nation, two Presidents, 
two Chief Magistrates, have been removed 
by the hand of the assassin 1 And were 
not Abraham Lincoln and James A. Gar- 
field, as men, as characters, rising from the 
humblest walks of life to the highest posi- 
tions in the gift of the people, in a peculiar 
sense tlie products specially claimed for our 
institutions ? And again, before charging 
the evils of Greek and Italian brigandage 
to a monarchical form of government, and 
asserting their impossibility in the midst of 
our free institutions and under our glorious 
banner, will it be amiss to recall the story of 
the James Brothers, and the honors bestowed 
upon tiiem in this our day and in the very cen- 
ter of our boasted civilization ? I repeat, shall 
we leave the cure of these evils to the 
agencies now operating — those that we have 
enumerated, and the great voluntary activi- 
ties of temperance and science and reform. 
Have we not seen how each and finally all 
of the agencies are unequal to the task of 
universal education which, "like Spring," 
shall "leave no corner of the land un- 
touched?" 



Has there not been in our hearts and on 
our lips one great patron of education, the 
Nation, not yet sufficiently invoked ? And 
is not this the only one available, equal in 
power and ample in means to meet the pres- 
ent emergency? This patron does not and 
need not displace or control either family, 
Church, or State, or voluntary activity. The 
nation need act only by its patronage, by 
its moral influence, by a reasonable disburse- 
ment of aid accompanied simply by condi- 
tions that shall make its expenditure honest 
and efficient. It need act only as a patron, 
whose aid given to the Slates shall lift the 
burden impossible for all other agencies to 
bear, and by suitable aid stimulate them to 
greater endeavor by assuring their hope of 
success. 

Clearly this aid by the general govern- 
ment to education can do no violence to that 
constitutional provision which authorizes 
Congress to act for the general welfare, and 
under which so many millions of dollars have 
been so freely voted to roads, rivers, and in- 
ternal improvements. The policy of this aid 
accords with the traditions and practices of 
the government from its foundation. Out 
of it came the great grants of land to com- 
mon schools, to agricultural colleges, and to 
universities, amounting to nearly seventy- 
nine millions of acres, that have had such 
incalculable influence upon the destiny of 
the newer States. 

The general government is the largest 
patron of science. Under it more researches 
are conducted than under any other agency 
among us. 

For the enlightenment of the citizen it 
carries on one of the largest printing estab- 
lishments in the world. Its aid in the es- 
tablishment of libraries readies millions of 
dollars. This sending abroad of light and 
knowledge to every nook and corner aids 
every localit}'' to judge and act intelligently 
for itself. This diffusion of knowledge is 
not centralization of power, but the reverse. 

Further, the general government aided 
the establishment of the first institution, 
that at Hartford, for the instruction of the 
deaf and dumb, and has crowned all the in- 
stitutions of that class in the several States 
by that noble one, the Deaf-Mute College at 
Washington, the first of its rank in the 
world, be it said, to the honor of American 
statesmen, 

When the blind had in vain sought aid in 
obtaining a literature elsewhere, the general 
government gave a permanent fund of a 
quarter million of dollars for a printing-house 
for the blind, and those in every Congres- 
sional district may have the benefit. 

In 1836, when the national treasury was 
as it is now, more than full, a surplus of over 
twenty million dollars was disbursed among 
the States that received it as a loan, and in a 
number of instances used it to increase their 



54 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



school funds. Thus the national treasury 
promoted that revival of education which 
was then arousing tlie indifferent and over- 
coming tlie hostile, and therefore specially 
contributed to the preparation of the genera- 
tion that saved the Union. 

Only the general government can do jus- 
tice to all the interests affected by that great 
river the "Father of Waters.'' Only the 
general government has been able to cope 
with that terrible plague, the yellow fever. 
So only can the nation meet the greatness of 
the present emergency by adequately aiding 
existing agencies, and thus enable the peo- 
ple to cope with the plague of ignorance 
more fatal to human good than any leprosy 
that can assail the body. Besides, we should 
not forget that the nation by the Constitu- 
tion must guarantee to each State a republi- 
can form of government ; and by later pro- 
visions we are aware that the nation has 
assumed to protect the citizenship of those 
formerly slaves. Do we not know, if the 
theories are sound on which rest our in- 
stitutions of freedom, that in the execution 
of either of these trusts the nation would in 
vain marshal armies until they were as op- 
pressive as those of the old world ? Equallj'- 
in vain it would add statute to statute, if 
the people themselves, the people resident in 
the locality in peril, do not possess or do not 
acquire that intelligence and virtue without 
which a repubhcan form of government and 
the enjoyment of American citizensliip are 
absolutely impossible. 

It was the belief of the fathers, and it is 
a truth by which we must abide, that the 
free, intelligent choice of the people is our 



only safety. If the nation may use its 
navies and armies to guarantee this safety, 
and fail, as it must, if no other means are 
employed, may it not rightfully, at least as a 
generous patron, bestow the means to aid 
the States in building school houses, or in 
paying teachers, whereby the people may be 
so enlightened thai they shall come of their 
own free will to know, cherish, achieve, and 
defend this result ? 

Are not tlie great patriotic thought and 
the increasing anxiety for the Republic 
strongly gravitating to this conclusion, and 
pointing to our national statesmen as tlie 
men on whom rest the final responsibilities" 
for adequate action ? 

The fathers of the republic, before they 
had gone the half of twenty years, found tlie 
defects and weaknesses of the Articles of 
Confederation. They achieved their greatest 
triumph of statesmanship in revision and in 
giving us the Constitution. Have not our 
statesmen in the great changes of the last 
score of years seen the imperative need of 
other revisions, and discovered the oppor- 
tunity by giving to universal suffrage the 
guarantee of universal intelligence, to add 
new assurance of the prosperity of the coun- 
try, and of tiie continuance of our liberties, 
and new glories to American citizenship ? 

Then shall 

" Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, 

The queen of the world and the child of the 

skies, 
Thy genius commands thee; with rapture 

behold 
While ages on ages thy splendors unfold." 



lY. THE NEGRO 1 AMERICA. 



1. OPENING REMARKS. 



REV. E. S. EUST, D.D., OF OHIO, 

Secretary Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 



In presiding at the fourth session Dr. Rust spoke as follows : 



THE topic of discussion this morning is 
" The JSTegro in America." The Negro is 
here in common with the representatives of 
ail other nationalities. Europe, Asia, and 
tiie Islands of the Sea are represented here, 
and why not Africa? 

The Negro is liere under circumstances 
differing from those of the representatives 
of any other country. The Negro is here by 
invitation. Other races and peoples are 
here by their own free will and accord. 
Some fled here from the persecutions of the 
Old World for protection ; others came for 
gain or pleasure, but all voluntarily. 

But the Negro is here on invitation, after 
earnest solicitation, and he is our guest, and 
is entitled to kind and respectful treatment. 
Yea, more; he came by compulsion! We 
fitted out vessels to bring them over, and 
New England is steeped to the lips in guile 
by her participation in bringing Negroes to 
this country and selling them into perpeiual 
bondage. 

The Negro has contributed largely to the 
material prosperity of this country. The 
agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial 
interests of the nation have been greatly 
aided by the labor of the Negro, and, in the 
late rebellion, he contributed valuable service 
toward the preservation and perpetuation of 
tlie nation. 

In the history of the Negro in America 
there are three important epochs. The 
first embraces the foreign slave-trade; the 
next item of that epoch the domestic slave- 
trade. You know the whole history of 
African slavery, beginning with the petty 
African princes making captives and selling 
them into bondage. You understand the 
cliaracter of the voyage from Africa to 
America; you are familiar with tlie horrors 
of the " middle passage." Thank God, the 
foreign slave-trade is broken up I Then fol- 
lowed the interstate slave-trade. Such a 
trade was a burning disgrace to the nation. 
I never shall forget the sight in Washington 



I once saw when a boy — a cofEle of slaves — 
men and women chained together, marching 
through the streets at the sound of a fife and 
drum, half famished, half clad, poor, misera- 
ble wretches, going down into the pei-petual 
bondage of the South. Thank God, the 
interstate slave-trade is broken up ! In a 
single year Virginia sent down into the far 
South forty thousand human beings, yielding 
a return of $25,000,000 1 So disgraceful 
was this traffic that one of the representa- 
tives in the Legislature of Virginia said: 
"Virginia is one grand menagerie, raising 
human beings, like oxen, for the shambles." 
Thank God, that the nation is no more dis- 
graced with that inhuman traffic ! 

The next epoch is the emancipation epoch, 
the toils, struggles, and triumphs of whicii 
are too fresh in your minds to need repeti- 
tion. 

The third epoch includes the reparation 
of the wrongs of the slaves and the prep- 
aration of these millions of emancipated 
ones for Christian citizenship. 

Why emancipate them ? Why break up 
the relations of the slave-trade ? Why an- 
nihilate the system of slaverj^, luiless you 
mean to educate them ; unless you intend to 
repair the wrongs you have inflicted on this 
people? Why strike the fetters from their 
limbs, and leave their minds in the bonds of 
ignorance and degradation ? 

Every argument for the overthrow of the 
slave-trade, both foreign and domestic — for 
the emancipation of the slaves — in thunder 
tones demands for them education and ele- 
vation. The work of this third epoch is the 
most important of the three. The struggles 
of the three center in this. Better not to 
have begun than not to finish up this work 
by education. We must recognize the man- 
hood of the freedman. Break up the cruel 
system of caste, and treat the colored citi- 
zens as men and brethren. Nothing short 
of this will meet the demands of the age 
and the approval of God. 



56 



CHRISTIAN EDUGAT0B8 IN COUNCIL. 



THE COLOR LINE: WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT 
THREATENS. 



EEV. B. T. TAKISTEE, D.D,, 

Editor " Christian Eecorder," Pliiladelphia. 



GEOGRAPHERS the world over— this 
world of Christendom, at least — under- 
stand the significance of such phrases as the 
"Horizontal Line" and the "Equinoctial 
Line ;" and tJie common sense of enlightened 
humanity recognizes tlie legitimacy of such. 
And the same may be said of the " Battle 
Line " (Line of Battle) and the " Defense 
Line " among military men; the " Pip Line " 
among geologists, and the " Beauty Line " 
(Line of Beauty) among {esthetes. Even 
the significance of such a phrase as the 
" Life Line " of the palmisters comes in for a 
very general understanding, and for an in- 
dorsement equally general. But what shall 
we say of the " Color Line," which the white 
citizens of this country have conjured up, 
and which the black citizens of the same 
have more largely accepted and nurtured 
than is generally thought ? It is to be re- 
marked that it is a something peculiar to the 
United States. While the other lines of 
which mention has been made are universal- 
Ij'- recognized and indorsed by the enlight- 
ened wisdom of the world, this line of color 
is such a novelty iu its way, that outside 
our own Republic, especially outside the in- 
fluence it exerts, it is a something entirely 
unknown ; and, strange to say, even where 
pains have been taken to explain it, the 
greater the explanation the greater the doubt 
as to its possible existence. We repeat: 
our white fellow-countrymen have never 
been able to make the color line understood, 
much less give it respectable standing. By 
the influence they exert, republicanism, with 
a high respect for the majorit}^ has been 
made popular in many lands and among 
many peoples ; but, as we have said, they 
have utterly failed to give the color line a foot- 
ing anywhere. It is a plant so thoroughly 
indigenous as to refuse to be transplanted. 

The color line : What is it ? 

Of the color line, it is to be said that it 
presumes to regulate the society of our coun- 
try. In this, however, it treats with con- 
tempt the recognized principle as well as the 
recognized regulations of the Cliristian world, 
of which it forms no inconsiderable part, 
and essays to lay down a new social code, if 
not for all nations, at least for itself. Ac- 
cording to the principle and regulations ac- 
cepted by the peoples of all lands, equals 
may be said to be guaranteed the right of 
associating with equals, irrespective of race 
or color. Is a man royal? Then may he 



seek association among royalty, as was illus- 
trated in the case of the son of African 
Theodore, the Shah of Asiatic Persia, and 
even Kalakaua and Cetawayo, Is a man 
titled? Then may his associates be among 
the titled. Is he rich? The rich may be 
his company. Or learned? Men of his rank 
take him by the hand. And all this, as we 
have said, irrespective of race or color, 
which are esteemed but as accidents. And 
yet it is to be said that no authority exists 
to compel an unconditional acceptance of the 
principles and regulations recognized. Even 
autocrats and despots respect personal lib- 
erty to this extent. If the Autocrat of all 
the Russias prefer even a questionable 
princess, he is still the autocrat. If the 
English Princess Louise prefer a mere 
marquis, she is allowed the liberty of choice, 
and, in her social standing, loses not an inch 
of her height. If the Baroness Burdett- 
Coutts prefers a plain Mr. Bartlett, and he 
an American, there is none to step between 
— no statute to imprison, no mob to hang. 
And so of each of the grades we have men- 
tioned. In no single instance is association 
or non-association compulsory. 

Ordinarily, the social regulations are ac- 
cepted, but the man or tlie woman who elects 
not to accept, in no way is made to suffer for 
his temerity. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately, without 
royal or tilled classes among us, in the 
working of this code, we are spared the 
painful necessity of beholding one king snub 
another, because forsooth he was not of the 
same race or color; or, one prince snub an- 
other for the same reason. And so of mem- 
bers of titled classes, supposing us to have 
them. We are spared the necessity of seeing 
one duke scratching the name of another, 
in everyway his equal, probably his superior, 
because his color was not as his own. 

And yet, without having such classes 
among us, we are made to witness incidents 
as thoroughly foolish and hurtful among the 
unroyal and untitled of our country — un- 
roj'al and untitled only as the people them- 
selves are unroyal atid untitled — witness 
them to-day and will more surely witness 
them to-morrow, as would possiblj'- be the 
case were the classes mentioned among us. 
We see to-day, and will see to-morrow, if 
this new social code is to last, not only 
equals snubbing and scratching equals, but 
downright inferiors snubbing and scratching 



TEE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 



57 



men who are in every way their superiors ; 
and all for the reason tliat the color of the 
people composing the nation is not one and 
the same. According to this new code, men 
equally rich, or talented, or cultured, or re- 
ligious, or pious, are forbidden, on pain of 
public displeasure, to become associates. 
Our white men are taught, in the make-up of 
their friends, in every instance to ask, not 
the standard questions : Is she rich ? Is she 
accumplished ? Is she thorouglily good? 
questions fundamental to humanity — but, 
instead, are taught to ask largely in lieu of 
them all, certainly as deciding them all: 
Is she wliite? And as are taught the men, 
so are taught the women. "Let your asso- 
ciates," comes belching from tlie guns which 
guard the color line, " let your associates be 
white and of tlie right stamp ; but let them 
be white anyway." 

This, then, is the color line, and woe be 
to the man or the woman who is sufficiently 
'• gritty " as to defy it ; for though aristo- 
cratic and despotii Europe may and does 
tolerate personal liberty to this extent. Dem- 
ocratic America sliukes her head and snys : 
"No such liberty shall be allowed." It you 
doubt that America means what she says on 
thia score, witness, before you go to tlie 
South to inspect its prisons, where are in- 
carcerated those who were fortunate enougli 
to be rescued from the mob — witness, we 
say, the social ostracism practiced against all 
such in the JSTorth — an ostracism so com- 
plete as to make men shun even their own 
kindred, if they dare to offend, as the ancie nt 
leper was shunned. "What shall we say of 
this new social code? 

First. It comes too late to be effective. 
"Whether tlie whites and the blacks of the 
country shall mix is no longer an open ques- 
tion, being settled by the fact that the mix- 
ing has already, and to a very large extent, 
taken place. The black man already shares 
in the best blood of the land. Is he taunted 
as to regularity ? His reply is, that among 
the people toward whom our white fellow- 
countrymen of English, and even of European, 
descent love to claim kindred, it has never 
been esteemed either honorable or sensible to 
despise the natural sons of great men. 

Our opinion of the color line is : It is 
meddlesome, in that, as a third party, it es- 
says to make its own that which is purely 
the business of the parties of the first and 
second part. It is foolish, in that it hopes 
to have success. It is tyrannical, in that it 
restricts human liberty in matters where of 
all liberty is to be most enjoyed. 

Lastlv, of the color line it is to be said 
that it is suggestive of immoralitj', if such be 
possible between those joined of God but 
kept apart of men. 

Supposing such a code to become uni- 
versally accepted, what does it threaten? 
To give any thing like a satisfactory treat- 



ment to this most important portion of our 
paper would require more than our allotted 
time. It will therefore be necessary for us 
to simply give points. The peoples of our 
country — what are they now ? Wliat will 
they be in fifty or a hundred years hence? 
In round numbers we have now 43,000,000 
whites, 7,000,000 blacks, and possibly 1,000,- 
000 reds and yellows in the persons of In- 
dians and Chinese. What the number of 
these will severally be in fifty or a hundred 
years hence various estimates liave been 
made ; most notably that of Professor Gill- 
iam in the February "Popular Science 
Monthly." According to this reputable 
authority, the number of whites in the 
country in the year 1950 will be 168,000,000 ; 
the number of blacks ten years later, in 
1960, will be 96,000,000. He takes no ac- 
count of the reds and the yellows, classes 
destined to figure more conspicuously in our 
future history than most imagine. 

Dr. Abel Stevens, in the July "Methodist 
Quarterly Review," makes the following 
reference to the blacks ; we forego quoting 
his words in regard to the whites: 

" Our colored population is already much 
larger than the whole population at the be- 
ginning of the nation — hard on to double 
the latter. "We must bear in mind that its 
superior rate of increase is without the aid 
of immigration, upon which the growth of 
the whites so much depends. If it should 
double, not its own present rate of increase, 
but at that of the general population, say in 
about every twenty-seven years, it will be 
greater, within the life-time of our children, 
in about seventy years than the present 
population of some of the important States 
of Europe ; greater by millions than that of 
France, and advancing hard up toward tlie 
present figure of our whole population, 
white and black. 

"In about eighty-one years it will be 
some two millions more than our aggregate 
population at the last census — but three 
years ago." 

According to a calculation which we our- 
selves have made, we find the population of 
the blacks, in the year 1960, to be 67,654-,- 
737, estimating the increase to be for each 
intervening decade what it was in the decade 
just past, to wit, thirty-four per cent. 

Accept whichever calculation we may, this 
fact is apparent, that the blacks, to say 
nothing of the whites, are to be immensely 
numerous in the years to come. The blacks 
fifty years hence will not be the helpless and 
tlie spiritless creatures they are now ; for the 
bow will have regained its natural bend. Ed- 
ucated, rich, manly, and in position, they will 
be as ready to give as to take. In position, 
we say. What says Judge Tourgee, referring 
to Prof. Gilliam's paper: "In view of these 
facts and the apparent probability that in tlie 
lives of our grandchildren, if not of our chil- 



58 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



dren, not less than thirteen States of the 
Union may be controlled by the colored race 
— ac least if numbers are to prevail — how 
important does not the question of national 
education become." 

As we gaze upon these millions of whites 
and millions of blacks confronting each otlier, 
and remembering that where tliere is no as- 
sociation there can be no certain amity, and 
where there is no amity there can be no last- 
ing peace, we are made to ask, What will tlie 
harvest be ? 

As there cannot be other than one govern- 
ment, so there must not be ultimately more 
than one people. The Union, of which we 
so justly boast, must comprehend both. 

But we are not to be understood as hope- 



less of tlie future. In the words of that his- 
toric Southerner, Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, 
we say: "The social spheres arrange tiiein- 
selves to suit themselves, and no laws pro- 
mulgated by State or Church will cliansre the 
social afSnities and natural selections of men. 
Met! choose tlie circles for which tliey have 
affinity, seek the companionships they prefer, 
and find the places that are suited to them. 
No human force or sagacity will change the 
social laws which bring men together or re- 
pel them." 

This is law as ordained of God ; and be- 
cause it is law, soon or later it will domi- 
nate, all color lines to the contrary notwith- 
standing. Let us have peace j peace now, 
and peace forever. 



3. THE NEGRO AND HIS ASSIMILATION IN AMERICA, 



BEV. J, W. HAMILTON", 

People's Church, Boston, Massachusetts. 



THE problems of a century puzzle tlie peo- 
ple of a generation — not unfrequvntly the 
puzzle runs on into the succeeding genera- 
tion, and, it may be, generations. Few men 
have scope of vision far-reaching enough, and 
sagacity of soul adequate, to compass and 
comprehend the, problem of a hundred years. 
But there is a presiding genius in every na- 
tion whose counsel and control will not per- 
mit a people to live and thwart the purpose 
and plan of human history. In some way 
and in some time the problem must be solved. 
That is among the decrees. He is a wise 
man who never attempts to withstand the 
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of 
God. 

The Negro in America is the problem of a 
full hundred years — yes, the problem of five 
centuries. It has taken half the time already 
to state the question ; we have now the other 
half to work at it. "We spent some time in 
bringing him here, more time in getting him 
located after he was here, a great deal of 
time in talking about getting him away from 
here, and for twenty years we have been set- 
thng down to the fact that he is here to stay. 
The last census declares the colored popiila- 
tion of the United States and Territories to be 
six milhons five hundred and eighty thousand 
seven hundred and ninety-three. These fig- 
ures do not, however, state the whole ques- 
tion ; they only locate the part of it which 
has reference to the year of grace and of the 
census, 1880. The past and future of these 
figures come before us to give volume and 
significance to the discussion in which every 
citizen of the Republic must soon or later 
engage. It was in the same year in which 
the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock when 
slavery was first introduced into the North 



American colonies by a Dutch vessel which 
landed at Jamestown. One idea came ashore 
in Massachusetts, another in Virginia. Then 
the problem was announced; and the idea at 
Jamestown had two or three months the 
start. Massachusetts surrendered to Virginia, 
and in 1641 was the first colony to pass an 
enactment in favor of human slavery. And 
from Massachusetts to Mississippi the traffic 
in men and women and children ran on until 
a whole nation had sought to traduce a race 
of beings to merely marketable and servicea- 
ble chattels. The rigiits of man were -ex- 
changed for the rights of property. The war 
for our own rights ended with American In- 
dependence, but left seven hundred thousand 
persons within our territory whose rights no 
white man was bound to respect. The more 
ihe value of the property increased, the less 
the rights of the race were esteemed. The 
war for freedom became inevitable when 
" the mere value of the slave as a laborer, 
judged by the standard of the ox or horse, 
was estimated as high as two thousand mill- 
ions of dollars " The rebellion over, eman- 
cipation left the Negro where slavery had 
driven him. Such was his degradation, when 
it was proposed to make him a citizen, that 
many who had favored his freedom turned 
from him in hopeless lament. The author of 
one of the most noted books in our political 
history, the favorable mention of which by 
one of the candidates for tlie office cost him 
tiie Speakership of the House of Representa- 
tives in the American Congress, so far forgot 
the reputation he had made for himself in the 
appeal to his Southern people for the abolition 
of slavery, as to write another book when the 
citizenship of the Negro was proposed, in 
which the delineations of the character of the 



TEE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 



59 



black man were made to exhaust the resources 
of coniumely and epithet. He declared him 
a cannibal and bloodthirsty by nature, liea- 
tlieiiish, lying', tldevinj);, drunken, and shame- 
less. " How can the Negro," said he, "be a fit 
person to occupy in any capacity our houses 
or our hotels, our tlieaters or our churches, 
our schools or our colleges, our steamers or 
our vehicles, or any other place or places 
of uncommon comfort and conveuience which 
owe their creation, tlieir proper uses, and 
their perpetuity to the whites alone ? " Amer- 
ican slavery made it essentially necessary 
that every prerogative of manhood be denied 
the slave, and that his common origin and 
rel;itions with other men be disputed and 
disproved. What, then, if tliere be no vir- 
tue? If every slave was a thief and debau- 
chee, was not slavery responsible for the lost 
virtues? Mere property has no conscience, 
and upon such impersonal values the deca- 
logue can have no claim. 

But " the teachings of physiology, as well 
as the inspirations of Christianity, settle tlie 
question that all the tribes which inhabit the 
earth were originally derived from one type." 
"God that made the world" "hath made of 
one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all 
the face of tlie earth." The unity of the races 
settled, all questions of ethics foUow for the 
black man as well as the white. There are 
no shackles forged which can bind a human 
soul. They may force a struggle, but triumph 
will somewhere and somehow crown the con- 
test. The slave-holder must lose sight of the 
soul, and this he did. But the sighing and 
sorrowing, the hope and joy, of the Negro, 
tiirilled him with the soul-presence, which 
ever and anon threatened uutil it finally 
snapped the chains of his bondage and set 
him free. Lorenzo Dow speaks of a master 
who called his slave to account for the rela- 
tion of his Christian experience, and said to 
him, " that can't be, lor you have no soul." 
" Well, massa," replied the slave, " if de black 
man hab no soul, religion make his body feel 
mighty happy." We have traveled too far 
by the days gone off to return no more even 
to understand the possibility of such robbery 
as infested the manhood of the Negro a score 
of years ago. We can scarcely believe that 
Abraham Lincoln once uttered such words 
as these: "I have said that I do not under- 
stand the Declaration of Independence to 
mean that all men are created equal in all re- 
spects. Certainly the Negro is uot our equal 
in color — perhaps not in many other respects. 
I did not at any time say I was in favor of 
Negro suffrage. Twice — once substantially 
and once essentially — I declared against it. 
I am not in favor of Negro citizenship." But 
"emancipation in the United States was a 
growth rather than an enactment." The rev- 
elation of the whole truth seldom comes forth 
from any one period of the Christian Church. 
Christian ministers were wonc to declare in 



conferences and assemblies that slavery was 
"an institution as truly an ordinance of God 
as marriage or the filial relation." It was be- 
lieved to be a long step in the advance when 
the missionary spirit for colonizing the Negro 
seized the Churches. " Is this country to be 
the ultimate home of this people ? " said a 
minister from his pulpit. " No," he answered. 
" They were brought to this land for tutelage 
and trial." But who has thought of coloni- 
zation these twenty years? 

The rapid march of our civilization has led 
us to pass by the difficulties involved in the 
discussion of war problems as related to the 
slave people. We are in the midst of other 
issues — present issues — whose outcome de- 
mands the most careful consideration. It is 
less a question, and will continue to lessen, 
what we shah do with the slaves which slav- 
evj bequeathed us, than what we shall do 
with the children coming on since slavery 
was abolished. And the difficulties in tlie 
way of dealing with this new population will 
arise more from an attempt to apply the old 
methods of civilization than in conceiving and 
working new plans born of the present ne- 
cessities. The sooner we forget slavery in 
all its horrors and distinctions the better for 
us and our work. The relations of master 
and slave are ended, and with them all dis- 
tinctions of duty and privilege which they 
involved. It will not matter what you or I 
think of the settlement of the old disputes or 
difficulties. They are settled. This nation 
now can only be one people. We can have 
no solid South as against a solid North, and 
no people of the South different from the peo- 
ple of the North. There must be one nation, 
and that America. 

We are not a German people, nor an Irish 
people, nor an African people, i)ut an Amer- 
ican people. No two races can live side by 
side in this land, one the reproach of the 
other. We cannot be confederated. We 
must be assimilated. All the social, intel- 
lectual, and constitutional elements crept 
into our civilization must mingle in a oneness 
of relation, inseparable. There can be no 
distinction of rights, as there must be no 
restriction of privileges. 

The one truth, of the unity of the race, 
I repeat, forever settles its outcome in priv- 
ileges — duty. And, when the nation is com- 
mitted by its Constitution and Declaration to 
an equity of privileges before the law for 
all its citizens, its mission and ministries are 
pre-determined. Every restriction of right, 
practically imposed, is against the theory 
of the republic and an evidence of national 
hypocrisy. The nation is pledged by its 
very rigiit to exist to defend the humblest 
citizen in all his right to life, hberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness. 

Every good state promotes the education 
of its citizens. There can be no more pro- 
hfic source of danger to a state than the 



60 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



illiteracy of its citizens. Tlie last census 
gives far more than one half of the Negro 
population of tlie nation as uuable to read or 
write. As a matter of governmental regula- 
tion, national aid nmst be given to the 
education of these unlettered masses. The 
very protection of tlie state argues for a 
liberal education as its best police require- 
ment. No charity can be better bestowed 
tlian a good education. All progress of the 
state is dependent upon the better education 
of its most illiterate classes. The Negro is 
eniitled, under his constitutional rights, to 
an education, to have equal facility with 
every otlier ward of the state or nation. 
The restriction which closes the door of any 
school of the nation to the Negro, because 
of his race or pi-evious condition, is a thrust 
at liis rights before the law, and an attaclv 
upon the national integrity. Thirty-hve 
years ago, the fourth day of next Decenibei-, 
Charles Sumner delivered his famous argu- 
ment on tlie iniconstitutionality of separate 
colored schools in Boston, and, in six years 
and thirteen days from that time, a public 
meeting was held in Tremont Temple of the 
same city to celebrate the " Triinriph of 
Equal School Rights in Boston.'' Tliat 
meeting was a pledge of the certainty of a 
similar triumph in every great city in this 
Country. The education of a scliool which 
inhibits tlie presence of a scholar bt cause 
he or she may be a Negro, is unsafe, and the 
school stands as a menace threatening the 
peace and welfare of the community. But 
in no direction is the peace of the nation 
more threatened than in the restrictiou of 
the religious rights of the Negro to worship. 
We build churches which the black man is 
not permitted to enter unless he may slip in 
unnoticed, when God is alone, or with the 
congregation when he is hired fiS a sexLon. 
The enemy of color has commissioned the 
very messengers of God until they stand in 
their pulpits, behind the altars, under their 
epaulettes, to pronounce against a man be- 
cause of his race and skin. There is a 
proneness among ministers to prefer, in the 
vs'ork of our ministry, the man or woman, 
men or women, whom we labor to save from 
sin and death, when that preference is based 
solely upon their worldly importance. Be- 
cause a man has money or friends or talent 
or influence, or is colored white in his skin, 
more prayers are offered for his salvation 
than for the man who possesses no one of 
these recommendations. But " we see Jesus, 
who was made a little lower than the angels, 
for the suffering of death crowned with 
glory and honor, that he, by the grace of 
God, might taste death for every man." 
That he tasted more death, or death more, 
for one man than another the New Testa- 
ment nowhere reveals. 

Dr. Draper, late of the New York Uni- 
versity, attributed the color of the sliin 



entirely to the action of the liver. When 
we find conferences — religious conferences — 
so organized that a man, competent to fill, 
and eligible to, the office of a United States 
Senator, would be refused membership in 
them, and solely upon the ground of his 
color, may we not relegate the whole matter 
to the action of the liver ? In the one case 
the secretions of bile seem to have taken to 
the blood in finding the surface, in the other 
have they not taken to the prejudices ? 

But the destiny of the Negro in America 
will determine the outcome of our inhuman 
discriminations against him. Notwithstand- 
ing the millions pouring into the country 
during the last half of a century, the tenth 
census only gives 6,679,943 foreign-born 
persons among us. They mingle, mix races, 
and would disappear were it not for the 
flowing tides of immigration. There are 
1,337,664 persons in these United States and 
Territories who have native mothers while 
they have foreign fathers. There are no 
races in America which have not mingled, 
in some degree, with other races found here. 
The Indian and the African have mated and 
mixed their families, while the Chinese and 
the British have married and multiplied, the 
Ethiopian and the Italian, the Cuban and the 
Mexican, the French and the Spanish, the 
white and the black, the yellow and the 
brown, have mingled in a civilization at New 
Orleans, until there is little unmingled blood 
in the Creoles of three generations. As 
mulattos, quadroons, and octoroons measure 
the dissipation of race distinctions, so the 
second and third generations of mixed 
people frona the ends of the earth, as found 
in great cities, foreshadow a homogeneous 
nation whose God is tlie Lord. Despite the 
laws cf the States, with severe penalties 
against much of tliis miscegenation of races, 
the endless varieties of combination have 
existed and increased, until more than ten 
millions of the Irish and German, Scandina- 
vian and English, and probably more than 
five miUions of all others, not thus specified, 
have mixed their families in promoting the 
oneness of blood. 

Thirty years ago the total mulatto popula- 
tion was one to every fifty-eight of the 
whole population, and one to every eighteen 
of the white population in the slave states. 
What must it be now? Among all these 
diverse nationalities, these " widely acting 
processes," are fast shaping the national 
type of race in the New World. In the face 
of law and social proscription and prejudice 
one third of our whole population is already 
a mixed people with tendencies toward still 
more "widely acting processes." Five gen- 
erations more with a continuous immigration 
will mix America as thickly or thinly as the 
Crescent City is mixed to-day. 

As the first remove from the original 
races staggers prejudice, and the second 



THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 



61 



stunts its growth, the third will liusli its 
voice, and the nipidity of the rate of in- 
crease in our population will multiply these 
removes, until we are " fused into a distinct 
sub-race of mankind alone peculiar to the 
American people." Society is not a mixing 
of oil and water; it will be all water, all 
oil, or no mixture. I know we stand agliast 
at the mixture of some waters, but, if they 
run in the same channel, tliey take care of 
themselves. Far down the Mississippi can 
be seen running tlie Missouri, water in water, 
but who can tell the Missouri from the Mis- 
sissippi at New Orleans? Both are emptied 
of their colors when they reach the great 
Gulf. It stirs the blood of some of us to 
think of a colored population of nearly seven 
millions running out into the great white 
stream of people to which wo belong; but 
that is none of our business ; if we have no 
liking for such waters we can run along 
within the same banks as the great rivers 
do for many miles below the mouth of the 
Missouri, but to hinder the mingling we 
cannot. The great black waters have al- 
ready struck ttie Mississippi, and tliere is but 
one outlet to the sea. Help it, we wont. 
Hinder it, we can't. When we made laws 
in the great States, as I have said, forbidding 
the mixture of certain races, there was 
more mixture in those States than in the States 
where no such laws existed. Nor is it my 
business to settle who another man's wife 
must be. I have seen trouble enough in 
such matters for yoii and me to leave the 
wliole business alone. If he and she can't 
settle the matter, or they can and do, [ repeat, 
you and I had better let the thing be. How 
much trouble has this nation ever had or 
made about the marriage of a man of Ma- 
lacca, Japan, or the islands of the sea ? A 
mandarin, who may come as a merchant 
among us, can settle his name in honor upon 
a house as yellow as the fruit of the mango 
tree. All this, but no Ethiopian must change 
his skin or look up to an equal place among 
tiie best of men. I am telling you of what 
will l)e because of what must be. PSquitable 
relation must precede equitable privilege. 

"The rank is but the guinea's stamp — 

The man's the gowd for a' that. 

For a' that, and a' that. 

It's coming yet ibr a' that, 

"When man to man, the warld o'er. 

Shall brothers be for a' that." 

The nation, by law, has already eliminated 
every distinction of political, business, so- 
cial, educational, and religious rights, which 
were invidiously made against the Negro 
after his enfranchisement. Let him be edu- 
cated, intellectually and morally, and be- 
come a land-owner, and his political and 
social rights wiU take care of themselves. 
Put a controlling interest of Western Union 
and the presidency of some great trunk line 



in his hands, and he will not need to be 
elected to have influence in Washington. 
Give him a few millions to carry round in 
liis pocket, a clever education to take care of 
his money and position, and an election to 
the United States Senate from some Southern 
or new Western State, and prophecy will be 
fulfilled at once, when seven women shall 
take hold of one man, and they will all be 
white women at that. 

The first man wlio was of the earth 
earthy was not white, if the Bible has 
properly and significantly named him, and 
the last man which is from heaven will be 
like him. "The ideal or type man of the 
future will blend in himself all that is pas- 
sionate and emotional in the darker races, 
all that is imaginative and spiritual in the 
Asiatic races, and all that is intellectual and 
perceptive in the white races. He will also 
be composite as regards color." " If any fact 
is well established in history," said a writer 
on this subject, "it is that the miscegenetic 
or mixed races are much superior men- 
tally, physically, and morally to those pure 
or unmixed. Wherever on the earth's sur- 
face we find a community which has inter- 
married for generations, we also find evi- 
dences of decay, both in the physical and 
mental powers." If Harvard College were 
only to educate Boston boys and keep at it, 
and the boys never got abroad to see outside 
the university, but married and repeated 
themselves at home, eye-glasses and canes 
would be called into requisition much more 
than they are, until New England would 
run full and spill over a race of dudes 
which must mix outside or in time develop 
clear out. " The PJnglish people are great be- 
cause tiiey are a composite race. The French, 
notwithstanding that they are called Celtic, 
are also originally of many diverse bloods. 
Germany is also made up of a wide mixture 
of nations and races." And America holds 
infinite possibilities within her borders. But 
we shall not see her greatness at once, or 
justice meted out in a day. " If God," said 
the great German astronomer, " could wait 
six thousand years before he revealed to me 
the laws which govern the heavenly bodies, 
I, too, can wait until men accept them as 
true." The last great revelation of the 
Father of the race is the brotherhood of 
man, and if all men would only inlierit the 
blood of the Great King, they must come to 

" Shiloh's brook, which flows 
Fast by the oracles of God." 

When the bronze castings were being 
completed for the statue of Liberty on the 
Capitol at Washington, at the foundry of Mr. 
Mills, near Bladensburg, his foreman, who 
had superintended the work from the begin- 
ning, and who was receiving eight dollars 
per day, struck, and demanded ten dollars, 
assuring Mr. Mills tliat the advance must be 



62 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



granted him, as nobody in America except 
himself could complete the work. Mr. Mills 
felt that the demand was exorbitant, and 
appealed in his dilemma to the slaves who 
were assisting in the molding. " I can do 
that well," said one of them, an intelligent 
and ingenious servant, who had been inti- 
mately engaged in the various processes. 
The striker was dismissed, and the Negro, 
assisted occasionally by the fine skill of his 
master, took the striker's place as superin- 
tendent, and the work went on. The black 
master-ijuilder lifted the ponderous, uncouth 
masses and bolted them together, joint to , 



joint, piece by piece, till they blended into 
the majestic " Freedom " who to-day lifts 
her iiead in the blue clouds above Washing- 
ton, invoking a benediction upon the imperiled 
republic. Let it be remembered that the Great 
Master-Builder, who presides in the council 
of nations, is building out of our diverse civ- 
ilization a great people, whose chief glory 
shall be in doing his will. He is no respecter 
of persons, and will only take account of 
work done. Shall it be that the weak among 
us, the despised and rejected, shall come to 
honor, and the high and lifted up shall be 
cast down? "Let no man take thy crown.'' 



4. EDUCATION AN INDISPENSABLE AGENCY IN THE RE- 
DEMPTION OF THE NEGRO RACE. 



PEOF. S. B. DARNELL, B.D., 

Principal Cookman Institute, Jacksonville, Florida. 



WHO is the Negro ? He is a man — God's 
noblest work in all creation was a 
man. Prom this primitive type came this 
race. Here is the proof. God " hath made 
of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell 
upon all^the face of the earth." 

Chm&tic changes, survival of the lest 
adai)i(!ed, the retreat, transformation, or death 
o£/flie least adapted gave rise to the distinct- 
ive features of the various races; and by 
tins method of modification, under a tropical 
sun, came to be the Negro race. Most sci- 
entists and biblical scholars unite in this 
conclusion. 

Of the American Negro we speak: 

Where the ceaseless waves of yon ocean 
begin or end no mathematician can desig- 
nate. Where the tints of the distant clouds 
begin their growth or end their shades no 
lover of the beautiful can point ! 

It is equally impossible to define the 
metes and bounds of the Negro race. The 
fact is, the class of whom we speak to-day is 
far more American than African, and about 
as much Anglo-Saxon as of pure African 
blood. But few of those now living in the 
great black belts on Southern soil ever saw 
the African shores. They are to the manor 
born, and to the country chained with links 
forged deeper than ever slaver's shackles. 
They are Negro-American citizens, and 
prouder far of ihe distinction than you and 
I have credited them. 

In eleven years' residence in Florida I 
have met just two that were captured on the 
Dark Continent. One in one thousand may 
have known the darkness and horror of the 
slaver's hold, but from the ratio of increase, 
the precarious conditions under which the 
trafBc was placed, and the liable loss of ves- 
sels and imprisonment of naen, the trade was 



well-nigh annihilated. So that the vast ma- 
jorities are Americans born. And, in tiie 
unsettled condition of the civil and political 
affairs consequent upon the breaking up of 
the old and the inauguration of the new sj'^s- 
tem, many more fatalities would occur than 
in more peaceful and law-abiding conditions, 
HO that it would not be strange if one-half of 
the original four million sons of Ham, and 
those crossed with Japheth's erring ones 
who heard the trumpet tones of that Magna 
Charta of their hberties, have passed beyond 
the scenes of toil to the Elysian fields of 
which they sang in their quarters or sighed 
for under the burning sun of their unrequit- 
ed services; consequently one-half of the 
seven million freedmen have been born since 
slavery died. 

Before another score of years shall have 
gone not one in twenty will be found who 
has tasted the bitterness of American bond- 
age. Yes, these are Americans, colored 
Americans, descendants of the slaves, shaded 
from the softest salmon to the blackest black. 
I need not raise the question. Who is re- 
sponsible for their presence in our midst? 
or that equally pertinent one, Who is re- 
sponsible for tlie lightest shades of the col- 
ored man? but of the latter I will simply 
say, the quantify and quality of pigment de- 
termine as a physiological element the tints 
of skin from fairest blonde to deepest black, 
and the}"" are, as a rule^ in mathematical pro- 
portions to those residing in the parents; and 
what a startling fact does this bring to our 
notice, viz., that not one-half of these col- 
ored and freed men are of pure African blood. 
These shadows are passing round, and the 
time will come when none of these deepest 
shades will be found. However we may feel 
on this question, the stern logic of sequences 



THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 



63 



will make, in the coming years, " Our 
Brother in Black " a misnomer, and the di- 
verse streams of blood will so mingle that 
our posterity shall quote again. " God hath 
made of one blood all nations of men for to 
dwell upon all the face of the earth." Do 
not be alarmed at this, but strange and in- 
tricate problems are coming upon posterity, 
and the solution will come in the ages. To 
these the living must adjust themselves. A 
writer of no mean pretensions raises a 
note of alarm from North Carolina, and sub- 
mits tlie probable relative numbers in the 
tjouth for tlie next century. He finds the 
white race doubles every 30 years, and com- 
putes as follows: 12,000,000 for 1880, 24,- 
000,000 for 1910, 48,000,000 for 1940, 96,- 
000,000 for 1970. 

For the Negro race, commencing at 1880 
with 7,000,000. he doubles them in every 20 
vears. making 14,000,000 for 1900, 28.000,- 
000 for 1920,' 56,000.000 for 1940, 112,000,- 
000 for 1960, or 168.000,000 against 96,000,- 
000 m 1970 — nearly twice as many colored 
in 90 years. Tliis, lie declares, must culminate 
in an irrepressible conflict. 

It will not do for posterity nor for us to 
say. Colonize them I Colonize wlioia? Ex- 
patriate them ! Banish whom ? They are 
not aliens from tiie commonwealth of Ameri- 
ca. The " must go " given to the poor In- 
dian, if applied to the colored American, 
would raise tlie question, "Wlio must go? 
and whose are to go? Some may wish to 
welcome skeptics of the Rhine, give greet- 
ings to tlie guzzlers of beer, and say to the 
poor Italians, Come, grind on your organs ; 
but poor freedraen and mixed bloods of the 
South, You must go. We never will endure 
what you indicate as the inevitable. Well, 
now, dear friends, all this has a solution, the 
world has rolled on these few thousands of 
years, and the little pigmies, called men, 
cannot stop it; and we must not distrust tlie 
harmonizing and molding power of Chris- 
tianity, especially in the light of such tri- 
umphs as crown its proud pages of the past. 
This class of citizens are to be the monu- 
ments of its grandest triumphs, and while 
removing the reproach of the past, they will 
be the demonstration of its vital excellence 
in subjugating men to its holy principles of 
universal brotherhood. No such severe test 
now remains of national importance as the 
American Negro, and what shall we do for 
and with him? Shall he drift along with 
the sea of humanity, surround the ship of 
state, check her speed until in some trough 
of rolling seas we all sink together, and thus 
allow to perish the asylum for millions ? 
Shall he who has been the good Samaritati 
so often, though a slave, be turned away 
and perish when he has nursed our soldiers, 
cared for the helpless, nurtured the young, 
fought our battles, and defended our grand 
old flag? 



Shall he be turned loose to grope in igno- 
rance, sin, and the moral desolation in which 
freedom came to him? or shall he be lifted 
to plains of civilization where ho may have 
an equal chance in the race for life? 

We must stand up statesmanlike, and meet 
the responsibilities of this national question 
squarely, with Christian fidelity, and pro- 
vide for tlie cultivation of this susceptible 
soil, and expect the gracious fruits of Indus- 
try, lategrity, and Intelligence. 

In regard to their Industry : 

Do you wonder that some felt like taking a 
life-long jubilee? Had I been "a slave, to 
fan my master's cheek and tremble when lie 
woke," surely the trumpet-sound of freedom 
would have had restful tones for me more 
than one Sabbath in a week. But nature's 
necessities, some good examples and sound 
exhortations by others, have set the many 
hands at work until their taxable property 
in many of the Southern States ranks among 
the millions, and this, too, in the presence of 
immense embarrassments to their tiirift and 
frugality, e.g., "the fraud of the Freedman's 
Bank," and those safe deposits in misplaced 
confidence never to be returned. True, we 
have some lazy laggards who are imitating 
the virtues (?) of their masters, and this is 
due to the natural characteristic of others 
about them, and the good imitative powers 
of the colored man. But with all this ac- 
cursed indolence the pest of tramp life has 
not reached this class; it is unknown in the 
South, save a few vagrants sent down for 
climatic advantages in the winter. 

Their integrity is often called in question. 
This element suffered from some causes we 
must explain. Conscience, which sits at 
once as parent and judge of the moral ac- 
tions, was almost obliterated by the devas- 
tations through which they passed. Might 
was right, and every human hope and tie 
was held in the master's hand. Statutory 
and common law alike forbade the agency 
of the slave ; no action of his could bind his 
principal. He was a thing, not a person, in 
the eyes of the law. Could not bind him- 
self by oath, or charge aught against an- 
other. Personal responsibility did not in- 
here, could not inhere, in the chattel. Man- 
hood was gone. Conscience was almost 
obliterated from the mental horizon of the 
mam All the faculties which play in moral 
activity had gone into winter-quarters and 
become so benumbed that it takes the white 
heat of our best civilization, and grace added 
chereto, to restore them to normal action ; 
and any people so overpoivered by the liand 
of such wanton oppression would have 
broken down; but their rebounding natures, 
from the wreck and ruin of tliis old system, 
have produced already many prophetic ex- 
amples for the present and coming genera- 
tions. Men can be found in any community 
upon whose broad shoulders rest the honors 



64 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



and responsibilities requisite for a first-class 
citizen — we have manj' such in Florida. Of 
the hundreds of students we have trusted, 
and the thousands of dollars entered as 
credits on our books, not five per cent, is 
charged up to loss account. What has been 
and what may be acconipli.shed of this moral 
resurrection is due to intelligence and the 
grace of God. Of the former of these we 
have now to speak. Without some knowl- 
edge grace is impotent. Many thought that 
conversion and reconstruction were all these 
ehilulike minds needed, but, alas! while some 
by peculiar endowments and fortuitous cir- 
cumstances have come to an excellent estate, 
the millions are yet under the cloud. Like 
the enfranchised six weeks' emigrant, he can 
vote only as a machine. His loyalty, how- 
ever, can never be questioned. 

Some improved the advantages afforded 
body- servants, and walked into the halls of 
legislation, where once their masters stood, 
but the vast majorities have had no oppor- 
tunities to learn their duties as citizens. The 
positions in commercial and mercantile life 
are liedged about with more than a Chinese 
wall. Out of over two hundred qualified for 
ordinary mercautile life, in Cookman Insti- 
tute, of which I am president, one is a pho- 
tograplier, one a book-keeper, two are 
dealers in merchandise, and two 1 ave had 
valuable positions in the Departments at 
Washington. 

A white face is almost a sine qua non 
for a successful effort to obtain a clerkship 
or merchant's position in the land where 
these people live, and our whole country is 
not free from the sin. Secretary Lincoln 
had not the nerve to cause the papers of 
Livingston, our graduate, to be produced at 
West Point. The case was wrought up at 
Washington to preclude investigation, and 
his alleged failure magnified when he had 
passed a competitive examination and out- 
stripped three white men for the cadetship, 
and since, by another examination, won a 
place that gives him $1,200 a year and 
aftbrds him an opportunity to graduate in 
medicine in two years to come. Yes, the 
prejudice is mountain high, but, hke an ice- 
berg, it will thaw out under the tropical sun 
of intelligence and the heat of Gospel truth, 
and these alone will accomplish it. House- 
hold servants saw what civilized life was, 
and their ideas of domestic economy were 
somewhat developed; some became experts 
in cooking and general duties, consequently 
some good liomes are found among them to- 
day ; but what are these among the millions ? 
It must not be forgotten that they were a 
small percentage compared with the men and 
women who toiled under a Southern sun, 
either on the broad savannahs, or fingered 
the boles of snowy cotton, and who, never 
crossing the threshold of the mansion, 
turned away to the dingy cabin quarters to 



cook, eat, and sleep in one large room — a 
would-be home, but characteristically de- 
scribed by their expressive phrase, "De 
place wor I stays at." In this huddled con- 
dition, what of home knowledge or true 
social life could possibly be obtained by 
these parents, children, men, and women 
herded together. The wonder is that the 
home life and social tie survived at all. But 
the great evils naturally suspected do not 
prevail. Married life and individual chastity 
are illustrated by vast majorities ; and, in 
view of the superior intelligence enjoyed by 
the whiter race, not serious odds are to be set 
down against the Negro. If others shall 
draw a darker picture, then so much more 
reason is there to insist on the necessities 
for education. But what have been their 
intellectual opportunities. The answer is 
formed already in most minds. I urge you 
to ponder it more carefully. Here we had a 
positive and successful prohibition. How 
vigilant these guardians were to maintain 
the honor of the statutory and common law, 
lest some poor ebony-face should be enlight- 
ened with one ray that might guide them to 
the north star of deliverance. What could 
dispel the Egyptian darkness that possessed 
their minds ? A few Christian hearts broke 
over these lines, but they were watched, cir- 
cumvented, and prohibited, sometimes chas- 
tized for the infraction of tlie law that made 
it a crime to teach the Negro. It was well 
understood that education cut the cord that 
bound the slave, and well did they reason, 
vigilantly did they guard the limitations that 
bound the giant, and firmly did they hold 
the prostrate mind, lest it should learn to 
know its strength and assert its rights to 
liberty. 

Now that the possibilities are open to him, 
and freedom has been crowned with the 
perilous privileges of fran-chise, his igno- 
rance — the occasion of his subjugation then 
— must be counteracted now by conferring 
the interdicted agency as the only and abso- 
lute condition, the only lever of power, that 
will lift him to the level of orOinary and 
dutiful citizenship. This has been advocated 
from rostrum, pulpit, and press, but the 
remedies thus far employed have been 
wholly inadequate. The spasmodic effort of 
Christian lieroes to go South to teach spent 
its force, did good; tlieir memory should be 
embalmed in our hearts forever ; but, worn- 
out by care, grown old in service, circum- 
vented by the plots of designing men, chilled 
with the long ostracism by persons who 
ought to have hailed them as angels of light, 
one by one, by death or removal, marriage, 
or retirement to their more congenial homes, 
this noble band has scarcely a representative 
among the common schools of the entire 
South. The next possible resource was the 
results of their work, the ill-trained, imma- 
ture minds among the freedraen themselves. 



TEE JSTEGBO Ilf AMERICA. 



65 



Some of these did become teachers of no 
mean proficiency, but the tliousands required 
were wanting, and are to-day being only 
partially supplied by the efforts of our de- 
nominational schools. These are working 
up to their fullest capacity, but their products 
do not supply more than one-tenth of the 
demand. Not a small portion of their quali- 
fied teachers get into positions of greater 
emolument. Home and parentage take away 
a large percentage; and so, while the 
normal is the prevailing idea, yet the suppl}"- 
afforded has to be a constant flowing stream. 
Nor can we look to the Christian Church, 
with all its vitality of moral forces, to furnish 
this absolute necessity for redeeming the 
colored race. Its preachers may preach, its 
prayers ascend, conversions ensue, but that 
does not become a substitute for education 
even here in the North, much less can it 
succeed in the South. Intelligence must 
precede or accompany the grace of God to 
elevate the man to conditions of Christian 
character, and character-building is the aim 
of all true education. Primary principles 
must be taught, discipline of mind must be 
attained, but all means employed and indi- 
vidual efforts put forth that do not aid in the 
establishment of character, in the strength- 
ening of purpose, and in ennobling the nat- 
ure, are of little avail. 



Now, what is universally acknowledged to 
be a necessity to the strengtJL, protection, and 
perpetuity of all other races, must be con- 
ceded to be essential to the welfare of this 
race, and the utter failure of the States to 
afford adequate raeaus to inaugurate and 
sustain tliis remedial agency causes the race 
in whose name we plead to-day to stretch 
out its imploring hands, to raise the cry 
again, " Lord, how long shall these bless- 
ings of freedom be denied us I " More than 
this, 

" A poor, blind Samson is in our land, 
Bound hand and foot and prone upon bis 

back. 
But, who knows, that in some drunken 

revel, 
He may rise and grasp the pillars 
Of our temples' liberties, shake the foun- 
dations, 
Till all beneath its broken columns lie in 
ruins." 

Let the pleadings of the people, the 
dangers that threaten, and the alarms 
sounded by their friends or foes, the welfare 
of the several States, the safety of the whole 
body politic, the future stability of our great 
government, alike appeal to the strong hand 
of the nation's aid, to interpose and declare 
by the use of millions — Let there be light. 



5. ASSIMILATION, NOT SEPARATION. 



EEV, JABEZ PITT CAMPBELL, D.D., 
One of the Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. 



THAT the Africo- American, or colored man, 
commonly called the Negro, is the sub- 
ject of a most cruel, wicked, and unjustifiable 
prejudice in America, which does not appear 
to e.xist against him in any other grand divis- 
ion of the earth, is a fact beyond the power 
of successful contradiction. 

Many persons who are, as they suppose, 
unjustly numbered with this class of persons 
against wliom this prejudice exists, are goaded 
in their feelings into little, if any thing, less 
than desperation, and despair, finally, in some 
cases. They are forever looking at the dark 
side, and never at the bright side, of this 
picture. It is commonly said, and it is said 
because it is commonly believed, that the 
American "white" people are prejudiced 
against the Negro in their heart on account 
of his color — that the American hates the 
Negro on account of the color of his skin. 

But it is not so. They who are thus per- 
suaded are laboring under the infiuence of a 
mistaken notion. The American people are 



no more prejudiced against the Negro on ac- 
count of the color of his skin, than the most 
refined people of Europe, who never dream 
of hatred toward the Negro on account of 
his color. 

The American gentleman, like the Eu- 
ropean, wears black cloth, black hats, and 
black boots ; and he drives black horses, 
keeps black dogs for his pleasure-taking and 
sporting purposes, and he deals in black 
things generally. The American lady, like the 
English and French lady, whom she follows 
as her fashionable guide, wears black dresses, 
black bonnets, and black shoes. And she 
has her black cats, and her black lap-dog, 
which she is often seen carrying in her arms 
or upon her hands, without the shadow of a 
sign of her being prejudiced against him on 
account of his black color. The charge that 
American prejudice against the Negro has its 
foundation in the color of his skin is not 
true, it is a false assumption. 

But it is condition, not color, that stands 



66 



CHRISTIAN' EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



athwart the Negro's progress — it is caste, the 
curse of the earlier civiUzations. To illustrate: 

Some years ago I had occasion to deliver 
a lecture at Burlington, Vt., upon the sub- 
ject of slavery, and the bad effects of it upon 
both races— white and colored people. Speak- 
ing concerning American prejudices, I en- 
deavored to show that the American preju- 
dice was against the Negro on account of his 
condition, and not his color. 

After the conclusion of my lecture, a well 
known, ver}' wealthy gentleman arose and 
made a statement which confirmed the truth 
of my position. He said that some years 
ago a colored young man was sent by the 
American Missionary Board to labor as a 
missionary on the coast of Africa. Before 
leaving America he married a wife. They 
went to Africa, and stayed there about twelve 
years before they returned. 

They came home on a visit, and after their 
arrival in New York, the secretary of the 
society wrote to the above-named gentleman 
to get up a meeting for the missionary, and 
also requesting him to provide a stopping-place 
for the missionary, his wife, and child. The 
gentleman was heartily willing to obey the 
order, but he forgot to inform his wife, and 
to show her the letter of the secretary. He 
met them upon the arrival of the steam-boat 
on Lake Champlain. He took the woman by 
the arm, and the little girl by the hand, 
directed the man to take his carpet-bag, and 
they went up to the house of this wealthy 
merchant. He rang the bell of his own 
front door. The Irish waiting-maid came 
and opened it. But when she saw a colored 
woman having hold of the arm of the mas- 
ter of the house, she fell back from the 
door. He paid no attention beyond giv- 
ing her an order to call the mistress of the 
house, and ask her to come into the parlor. 
The order was executed, and the lady of tlie 
house was immediately forthcoming. She was 
introduced to the Rev. Mr. Blank, and then to 
his wife, Mrs. Blank, to both of whom, in a 
very lofty and stiff, yet lady-like manner, 
she said, " How do you do ? and I hope that 
you are well." Siie was then told that the 
little girl was their daughter. She then said 
to the child, "How do you do, little one?" 
This being done, our gentleman said, " My 
dear, these persons have come here all the 
way from New York, and they have had 
nothing to eat to-day. Can you not give 
them breakfast, or something to eat?" 

She said, "I cannot." 

"With very great surprise he asked why 
she could not give them something to eat. 
She answered that there was nothing in the 
house. The husband again asked, "But, 
my dear wife, can't you give them some- 
thing, if it is only a lunch ? " 

She said, angrily, " I cannot. I told you 
that I liave nothing in the house to eat, and 
don't you believe me, sir? " 



He answered, " 0, yes, my dear wife, I 
believe. I always believe you. I only 
thought it to be very strange that you should 
have nothing in the house to eat." " But," 
said he, " my dear wife, let me tell you that 
this man and his wife are the missionaries 
that our Missionary Board, of which you and 
I are members, sent to Africa some twelve 
years ago, when this woman married this 
man, to go with him into our African Mis- 
sion work. They are the persons whom you 
have been most faithfully laboring to sustain 
in that mission from that time until the pres- 
ent. They have only come home on a visit 
to see their former home and friends, with 
the intention, when they have accomplished 
their design, to return to their former 
field of labor. And this little girl is their 
only living cliild, which was born under the 
Board, of which you are a member, and 
which you have been laboring hard to 
support." 

Hearing this statement, she was at once 
fihed with wonder, amazement, and a glad 
heart, to see the little girl that was " born un- 
der the Board." Tiddy was immediately sent 
in haste to call in the cliildren of wealthy 
neighboring families, to see the little girl that 
was "born under the Board." They came, 
and very soon the parlor was filled with 
them, all of whom were overjoyed to see a 
little girl tliat was " born under the Board." 

Although his wife had nothing in the house 
to eat so as to enable her to give the Negro 
preacher, his wife, and child a breakfast, she 
that day gave the best dinner, out of many, 
which he had eaten for eighteen months, all 
on account of the little girl that was "born 
under the Board." The knowledge of that 
fact caused the badge of prejudice, the black 
color of the skin, to cease to be an object of 
hatred and a bar to social Christian fellow- 
ship and friendly intercourse during the lime 
of their sojourn in " the land of the free and 
the home of the brave." 

The color of his skin is only a badge by 
which the class is known to which the 
American Negro belongs under the laws of 
caste. It is not a badge of universal applica- 
tion to men of other nationalities, such as 
are the Indian of this country, the Chinaman, 
the Japanese, the Spaniard, the Portuguese, 
and the men of other nations who are black, 
or brown, or tawny colored, but who are not 
white men. 

Assimilation, not separation from the 
American people, is the right of the Negro 
upon the American continent, and this right 
will be accredited to him by the people. AVe 
assume to say, witliout the fear of contradic- 
tion, that the' heart of the American people 
is on the side of liberty, the existence of in- 
voluntary servitude to the contrary notwith- 
standing. The actual existence of slavery 
among them was the exception, and not the 
rule. 



TEE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 



67 



The Puritan fathers represented by the 
pil.ccrim passengers oa the Mayfloioer, and 
who luude'd at Plymouth Rock in 1620, left 
tile OM World and came to sojourn in tlie New 
in order to escape both religious and political 
oppression, and enjoy botli religious and po- 
litical liberty in the New World. Those Pu- 
ritans became tlie riglit seed, the root, and 
brandies of the American nation. They 
laid the foundation of liberty and freedom 
upon the American continent. To them may 
be traced tlie origin of that statement which 
amounts to little less than inspiration from 
the Almighty, namely, "That we hold these 
truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
created equal, and are endowed by their Cre- 
ator with certain inalienable rights, among 
which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness." 

Tliat statement is the soul — the heart — of 
the American people, upon which all the in- 
stitutions of the land are founded, human 
chattel slavery excepted. And let it be 
forever kept in mind that the term slavery 
was never permitted nor allowed to appear 
in the original Constitution of our country. 
It is worthy of note that slavery never ex- 
isted by national constitution. The national 
heart would not admit of such an anomaly in 
the organic law of their free institutions or 



the Constitution of the United States. All 
the indications of divine Providence in the 
near past, and in the present, point most 
unmistakably to the fact tliat on this conti- 
nent must be developed a homogeneous peo- 
ple out of the heterogeneous masses who floclc 
to this land — the American idea nuist be 
accepted by them, and they must be thor- 
oughly baptized into it, or this must cease lo 
be their dwelling-place. And, indeed, imiy 
it not be tliat the God of all tire earth in- 
tends, from tliis American continent hs a 
center, to radiate a more perfect civilization 
and a broader Christianity to all the ends of 
the earth? 

The Negro, though forciblj'' brought and 
detained here, accepts, and heartily adopts, 
the American idea; he links hand and heart 
witli his white brother, and wlienever al- 
lowed, and even when not allowed, he gains 
his temporal and spiritual well-being witii 
his brother of lighter hue, laboring in ilie 
field, in the shop, in the counting-room, with 
him, and side by side kneels with him at a 
common shrine. 

The final result of the complete develop- 
ment of our American homogeneity looks 
toward a new era in the history of the world, 
called by some the millennium, or the ultimate 
triumph of Christianity over the whole earth. 



6. THE DANGER LINE IN NEGRO EDUCATION. 



EEV. WILLIAM HAYES WARD, D.D., 

Editor New York " Independent" 



I CONFESS I do not quite like to speak of 
Negro education. In some portions of 
our country the native has no place. We 
have no separate class, called Negroes, which 
must have a separate education. We have 
Negroes, large numbers of them, in our 
cities, but in education we do not know 
them from whites. They go to the same 
schools, recite to the same teachers in the 
Siime classes. I remember, when a boy of 
ten or twelve, going to the same public 
school with Negro children. We had no 
problem of Negro education. To be sure 
til is happy state of things is not quite uni- 
versal North, but it is extending so as to 
embrace its exceptions. New York city 
has lately abolished its colored schools with- 
out a word of objection being heard. We 
have Chinese schools yet, private Sunday 
and evening schools, because the Chinese 
are adults, and cannot talk our language; 
but there is no such necessity for Negro 
schools. Chinese children, if there were 



such, would be welcome to our public schools 
with other children. 

But, in certain portions of our country, 
portions where it is hard work to keep up 
one system of public schools, public senti- 
ment requires that two systems be mam- 
tained, one for the pure whites, and rhe 
other for the partly white and the wholly 
colored. Public sentiment requires this .so 
imperatively, that it is no use to think of 
overcoming it. Neither logic nor Chris- 
tianity can do that for years to come, and 
we must, meanwhile, submit to the absurd 
and the inevitable. Prejudice will, of 
course, give way in the end, but we must not 
delay education for that. We will do things 
as we can, if we cannot as we would, but 
with a constant protest. Leaving now the 
protest, however, which we do not wisii to 
carry to an impracticable limit, we proceed 
to discuss the Danger Line in Negro Educa- 
tion. 

While I think the danger line is not so 



68 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



much, in Neorro education as it is in the lack 
of it, .yet, in the progress of the education 
of a people coming out of absolute illiteracy, 
there comes a period when their little learn- 
ing, which ought to steady them, may un- 
steady them. The chief of all economic 
virtues, on which a community is built, is 
patient faithfuhiess in labor, chiefly physical, 
manual labor. That virtue can be possessed 
by a very ignorant, illiterate people. If they 
possess that sole virtue they will be success- 
ful and happy. Labor, patient labor, carries 
with it home and family and health. It will 
be rude labor, hand labor, mostly agricult- 
ur;;l labor, but sucli labor will be both do- 
mestic and reasonably honest. It will not 
culiivate vice or anarchy, though it may 
be a tool of it. It makes for virtue and 
peace. Theie seems to be an impression 
abroad now, however, that, as the Negroes 
are educated, they become unwilling to 
engage in regular labor, and that we are in 
danger of educating the Negro race out of 
their present sphere of usefulness into a con- 
dition of ambitious and mischievous idleness. 
We hear complaints of half-educated Ne- 
groes who are too proud and lazy to work, 
and who are onl}^ demoralizing those who 
do work. Indeed, a South Cnrolina stales- 
man (not noted for his love for the Negro) 
has lately expressed the opinion that his 
State would be enriched hy the emigration 
or deportation of two hundred thousand of 
its colored people. This remarkable propo- 
sition either contradicts the accepted truth 
of political learning, that every laborer has a 
definite money value, and is a part of the 
wealth of the state ; or it asserts that the 
Negro laborers are not laborers in fact, but 
that they are unproductive drones, or, at 
least, that they produce no more than they 
consume, and tliat they occupy the ground 
so as to keep out really productive labor. I 
do not know that Senator Butler would 
assert that the two hundred thousand whom 
he would deport are the more educated 
Negroes, but those who make his complaint 
of the unreliable character of Negro labor, 
and the deteriorating condition of the Ne- 
groes, are apt to be among those who are 
most suspicious of Negro education, and 
who have the sharpest eye to see its failure. 
We are told that as fast as they are educated 
they are unwilling to work, or that they 
wish to get their living by their wits. 

In considering this complaint one of the 
first things that occur in reply is that the 
education of the Negro is not progressing at 
any such rate as to inspire immediate dread. 
During the ten years, from 1870 to 1880, 
the number of voters in the South who 
cannot read or write increased by nearly 
two hiuidred thousand, an increase very 
evenly divided between white and black 
voters. In Georgia the illiterate white vote, 
duiing the decade, increased by eight 



thousand and the colored by sixteen thou- 
sand. In Kentucky the white illiterate vote 
increased by seven thousand and the colored 
by five thousand. In Tennessee the white 
illiterate vote increased by nine thousand 
and the colored by four thousand. In Texas 
the white illiierate vote increased by fifteen 
thousand and the colored by twelve thou- 
sand. In Alabama the white illiterate vote 
increased by seven thousand, the colored by 
five thousand. In Mississippi tiie white by 
three thousand, the colored by eighteen 
thousand. In North Carolina the white by 
eleven thousand, the colored by twelve thou- 
sand. In South Carolina the white by fifteen 
hundred, the colored by twenty-three thou- 
sand. In Virginia the white by four thou- 
sand, tlie colored by two thousand. In 
these nine representative Southern States — 
Virginia, Kentucky, Ti-nnessee, North Caro- 
hna. South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama. Mis- 
sissippi, and Texas — the white illiterate vote 
increased by sixty-nine thousand, the col- 
ored by ninety-six thousand. If we take 
the whole country through. North and 
South, the white illiterate vote increased by 
one hundred and thirty-eight thousand, and 
the colored by one hundred and sixty thou- 
sand, the great bulk of increase, in both 
cases, being in the South. 

It will be seen by these figures that both 
the whites and the blacks are holding their 
own in the matter of ignorance. If igno- 
rance be the road to virtue, industry, or 
thrift, then those who have been frightened 
by the rapid education of the Negro may 
calm their fears. There is no immediate 
danger but we shall have ignorant voters 
enough to preserve the contentedness with 
which both races will sink as low in the 
ranks of labor as will please the most aristo- 
cratic taste. 

I do not forget how much is doing for the 
education of the Negro. I remember that 
every State in the Sottth, almost without ex- 
ception, has, on paper, a passably fair system 
of free schools for both races, and that 
progress is making almost every year in the 
character or conduct of their schools. If 
the number of illiterates is increasing, so is 
also the number of those who can read and 
write. Much as I dislike tlie common- 
school system of the South, wliich is based 
on the ungodly principle of caste, declaring 
that whiles and blacks must be educated 
separately; that each town must have two 
sets of schools, one for its white brahmins 
and one for its black pariahs, a system that, 
in this coimtry. at least, nearly or quite 
dotibles the expense of supporting the 
schools, or else greatly reduces their term 
of continuance and efficiency; yet this can 
be said for it, that it is an education better 
than nothing. It is a system imchristian 
and bad, terribly expensive, and one that 
perpetuates, because it is based upon, the 



THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 



69 



spirit of caste. Further, it is false because 
it assumes to be based ou the color liue, 
which line does not exist; for tliere is no 
color line. 'J'lie gradation between white 
and black is so nice that no humau being 
can tell where the line runs. It even 
assumes to give the lie to facts, by classing 
as Negroes those in whom no eye can see a 
trace of Negro blood, and to force their 
cliildren into the Negro schools. But I will 
noi stop to dwell on the evils of a system 
which happens to be the best that can now 
be had. A society which has grown up on 
caste, which has for generations made one 
race masters and the other slaves, and 
which has laid down always the law of 
violeuce and cruelty that the children must 
follow the moiher, cannot be converted in a 
day. The old subject-race, too, will have 
its ignorance as also its vices, wluch will be 
easily made the excuse for perpetuating the 
wrong. Separate schools will, for many 
years, with all their extra expense, seem to 
be a social necessity at the South. It is all 
we can expect if the colored people may 
have a system of free scliools supported out 
of the common taxation, in which they 
shall have a share proportioned, not to their 
taxes and their wealth, but to the numbers 
of their children. But we cannot even tem- 
porarily be satisfied with a school law like 
that of Kentucky, in which State not only 
are the white schools separate from the Ne- 
gro schools, and kept so separate even in a 
populaiiou where one race is in a large ma- 
jority on penalty of losing all State aid, 
but a law which requires that school 
moneys shall not be distributed according 
to the numbers of those of school age, but 
according to the taxes paid — the school-tax 
of white people going to white schools, and 
those of colored people to colored schools. 
Such a school law has its reason in a desire 
that the Negro shall not be educated, and 
that the poverty and ignorance with which 
he came out of slavery shall be perpetuated 
as long as possible. Submitting, however, 
for the present, to the inevitable, we see 
with gratitude that the free education of 
the Negroes of the South is making progress 
even under a bad system, or with a vast 
number of utterlj^ incompetent teachers. 
If the number of illiterates is increasing, 
so also is the number of those who can read 
and write. And we acknowledge with sat- 
isfaction the noble work done for Southern 
education by Northern charity. The South 
is dotted all over with normal schools and 
colleges, every State has them, for the 
education of the Negro — schools not sup- 
poited bj' Southern money, but by Northern 
benevolence. In these the Congregationalists 
led, and still lead, the way with their long 
line of universities and industrial institutes 
and normal schools — Hampton Institute, At- 
lanta University, Fisk University, and 



others — not that they give more to the 
South than others, but that they have pre- 
ferred to put their money into general 
education rather than to establish churches 
of their own order. They are followed 
hard by Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, 
Episcopalians, United Presbj'terians, Friends, 
and others, from all of whose institutions 
there is pouring out a constant stream of 
young men and young wmneu fitted, alter a 
fashion not equal generallj^, it nnist be con- 
fessed, to the fashion of the North, but j^ct 
fitted fairly, to act as teachers. Nor do I 
forget how, through these and other schools, 
the Peabody Fund, now closing up its ac- 
tivity, or the Slater Fund, now beginning to 
work under the admirable conduct of that 
noble man. President Haygood, are doing 
their part in Negro education. No man can 
visit these schools, year after year, without 
being delighted with the progress made, 
it is true tliat the Negro begins a thousand 
years behind the white man; but, through 
these various school agencies and through 
the religious instruction he receives, he is 
rapidly gaining, and making up the lost 
ground quite as rapidly as could be expected. 
If the volume of ignorance has not diiniu- 
ished, indeed is increasing, yet the volume 
of education is increasing, and that at a 
faster ratio. There is progress, tliough not 
such rapid progress as need greatly frighten 
our reactionary neighbors who fear that edu- 
cation wUl spoil the Negro as a laborer. 

But let us come right down to the ques- 
tion, Does education spoil the laborer? If 
it spoils the black laborer it must equally 
spoil the white laborer. Does it? In com- 
munities all of whites there must be a 
laboring class. Is that class in England, in 
Germany, in Massachusetts, spoiled by being 
educated? Does it cease to labor ? If such 
be the fact, the world has not yet discovered 
it. England, Germany, Massachusetts, are still 
going on sublimely ignorant of it, working- 
harder and harder to extend and improve their 
system of free and universal education. In- 
deed, we suppose it to be a common lielief or 
superstition — it has come to be an axiom — 
that the voter must be educated, whether a 
laborer or not. Indeed, we are every-where 
coming to the rule of compulsory education. 
We say, by law, that children must be 
educated — the children of the poor as well 
as of the rich. "We make laws in New 
Jersey forbidding children to labor in facto- 
ries at an age when they ought to be in 
school. Our reason is not that these chil- 
dren may not become laborers, but that 
labor may be educated. We must educate it, 
or we perish. In this matter are colored 
people different from white? Not at all. 
Ah 1 there is not the difficulty at all. The 
real root-trouble is this: those who complain 
that the education of the Negro will ruin 
him as a laborer want to keep him ignorant. 



10 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



If they cannot have slavery they want serf- 
dom. They want the Negro to be a hand- 
laborer and notJiing else, and without am- 
bition to be any thing else. They wish to 
be gentlemen and property holders them- 
selves, and ihey do not want the Negroes 
gentlemen and property holders. They do 
not want to see them teachers, ministers, 
plij'sicians, lawyers, merchants, manufact- 
urers, land-holders. Tbey want to see 
them day-laborers, and contented to be 
nothing more. 

We must liave day-laborers, and they will 
be those who, tor the most part, have not 
sought a liberal education. The world can- 
not get on witlioiit day-labor. The question 
is, Sliall our labor be serf or free ? Shall it 
be intelligent or ignorant? Sliall we try the 
Massachusetts system or the system of 
Eussia ? Shall our laborers know how and 
wh}' they vote, or shall they be the tools of 
demagogues? Does uneducated labor work 
well in Russia? Tell us, enemies of Negro 
education, how has your plan worked in the 
South ? Is an ignorant ballot such a success 
in the South that you wish to perpetuate it ? 
The real fact is that those who wisli all labor to 
be ignorant do not wish it to be free. They 
are as much opposed to the ballot for the 
Negro as to the school-house. But, whether 
we will have it so or not, the ballot lias 
come to the Negro, and has come to stay. 
It is only a fool that can wish a voting 
citizen to be ignorant. 

To those who tell us, then, that there is a 
danger line in Negro education, that if they 
leai-n too much they will be too vain or too 
ambitious to be laborers, we reply that tliey 
have got to risk it. It is a bigger risk to 
have your voters ignorant. We do not pro- 
pose to build the structure of our American 
institutions on the rim of a volcano. An ig- 
norant suffrage is a boihng, bubbling volcano. 
W you tell us that you will take the ballot 
from them, we tell yon you shall not, you 
cannot. The ballot is there, so you must fit 
it by education for its work. The eternal 
facts of G-od and nature force you to go for- 
ward. You can't go backward. You must 
go forward, with all its risk. Do I say, with 
all its risk? Nay, with all its beneficent 
blessing; nay, more, with all its justice, fair 
justice, to a race to which we who have so 
long oppressed it, who are the authors of its 
faults, owe all and more than all that we can 
ever pay. The Negro of the South must, 
miist be educated. 

But when I am told that the educated Ne- 
gro is deteriorated by his learning, that he is 
nntitted for work thereby, I utterly deny the 
assertion. Is, then, a white man spoiled by 
education ? Who dares propose to the Amer- 
ican people that it pull down that ladder by 
wliich the poorest snipe of the gutter may 
climb to the university? Intelligent white 
labor is worth more, is more diligent, than i 



ignorant white labor ; so the same is true of 
colored labor. In this matter there is no 
difference between white and black. The 
color is only skin deep. No; the objection 
to colored education does not come from an 
honest fear that educated Negro labor will 
cease to be efficient, but from a desire to keep 
it uncle?; to keep it servile. 

It may be true that educated Negroes will 
not all wish to engage in the lowest manual 
labors. Do educated white men? They are 
fitted for higher work, that which tasks braia 
as well as hands. Are we unwilling to give 
a black man a fair chance to do the same ? 
Are not white men workers unless they dig 
ditches or hoe cotton? Count up how many 
thousands of teachers are needed in the 
South for the colored people. Not less than 
50,000 colored teachers are needed in the 
South, all well educated, and all hard work- 
ers. It will take a great while yet to secure 
them, with all the work which our funds and 
our societies can do. 

But 1 resent the assertion that educatiou 
does, in fact, make the Negro lazj' and worth- 
less. Let us look at representative facts. A 
year ago there were collected the statistics of 
the employment of the 426 graduates of the 
Hampton (Va.) Normal and Industrial Insti- 
tute, including with them 37 senior under- 
graduates. Of these 426, (two thirds males,) 
more than three fourths, have made teaching 
their regular and constant profession, and 
over 90 per cent, have engaged in teaching. 
Tuat means work, honorable work. Do you 
ask me what else they have done? I bid 
you remember that they are all young ; that 
a number were pursuing their further studies 
elsewhere ; but I will tell you what else they 
were doing : 37 are reported (I hope this will 
please those who want to see the Negro stick 
to his manual toil) as carpenters, waiters, 
common laborers, tailors, housemaids, seam- 
stresses, servants, janitors, shoemakers, mi- 
ners, etc. I believe their education has done 
them good. Our objector, I trust, will allow- 
that it has not spoiled them. Then theie are 
30 physicians, ministers, missionaries, book- 
keepers, clerks, postmasters, and merchants. 
Those are good, honest lines of business. 
Then, 153 of these young men report them- 
selves as the owners of land or other prop- 
erty. Seven own over 100 acres; 18 more 
own over 50 ; 4 more over 20 ; 14 more over 
5 ; and 59 more less than 5. They have 
proved that their education makes them 
thrifty, not thriftless. They have already, 
out of their scanty wages as teachers, begun 
to save a competence to become property 
holders. They have an interest in the pub- 
lic welfare. Tiiey have given hostages to tlie 
state. Thej"- have set a good example to 
their neighbors, white and black. Such is 
the record of the graduates of one scliool, 
and a similar record could be given by the 
representatives whom I see about me — Dr. 



THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 



71 



Rust, Dr. Hartzel, Dr. Strieby, and others, of 
all our societies for promoting the education 
of the Southern Negroes. 

I am wilUng to allow only this truth in 
the complaint, that education is making our 
Negroes worthless and shiftless. It is pos- 
sible that in some States a number who can 
just read, but who have not enterprise euough 
to seek a real education, are froth and scum. 
Of course there are such. They are in every 
white community, and hang about our street- 
corners, and lounge in our groggeries. If Sen- 
ator Butler could deport a hundred thousand 
of them from New York the State would be 
richer. But that is not a vice of color. It 
belongs to white and black alike. It comes 
from the inborn laziness which is a big part 
of the natural depravity of man. Men must 
be regenerated before they are cured of it. 
Education will relieve it, especially religious 
education, but it is a universal vice of human 
nature. 

This further I grant: tliat the Negro, 
while being educated to be a teacher, must 
not learn to despise manual labor. I would 
have a manual-labor department in every one 
of our colored normal schools or colleges. I 
go furtlier than that, for I say that there is 
no color in education. I would have all the 
grammar and high schools in the North and 
South, which are supported by the State, 
teach the elements of agriculture, carpenter- 



ing, and blacksmithing to every boy, and 
good manual labor in housework and sew- 
ing to every girl who does not learn it at 
home. To that, I think, we must come in 
these days when the old, silly system of 
apprenticeship has passed away, and noth- 
ing is taking its place. A manly character 
will not despise hard labor. Give us more 
Hamptons. Let our schools, North and 
South, follow more that model. 

But our benevolent societies cannot do all 
the work. The States cannot do all the 
work. They are poor. But the United 
States can do it. The government is rich. 
It is paying off the debt at the rate of 
$100,000,000 per year. Let just a few mill- 
ions be given lor the education of the Soutli, 
of white and black alike, and our institutions 
will be safe. At present they are in immi- 
nent peril. You gentlemen of the Freed- 
men's Aid Societies, who are so loudly ap- 
peahng to the unwilling North for money to 
educate the South, know the danger. As you 
recognize that the danger is now quite as 
imminent for the whites as fo»r the blacks, 
we, the people, demand of our representa- 
tives in Congress that they allow us, the 
people, to educate our own people. We will 
have it. "We cannot consent to see our citi- 
zens growing up in increasing numbers the 
tools of designing knaves. Give us an edu- 
cated suffrage, or we perish. 



7. OPENING REMARKS. 



REV. H. L. MOREHOUSE, D.D., 

Secretary American Baptist Home Missionary Society. 



Dr. MoEEHOTjSE presided at the fiftli session, and said : 



I CAME to this meeting with the purpose of 
saying not a word except what might be 
necessary in the introduction of the speakers 
who are to address us this afternoon. Al- 
though I am suffering from a severe cold, 
yet it is sometimes harder not to say some- 
thing than to speak. 

"We were interested this morning in the 
discussion of questions relating to the Negro 
in America. I am not sure but that the 
thing which we are after might be put in the 
reversed form — America in the Negro. That 
is what we want. When we say the Negro 
in America we mean, not only the Negro on 
our soil, but the Negro in tlie midst of Amer- 
ican civilization, American ideas : and what 
we mean by America in the Negro is Amer- 
ican civilization, American ideas of citizen- 
ship, of Church membership,of the family life, 
etc., incorporated into the Negro character. 



Much has been said in some quarters re- 
cently concerning the Americanization of the 
people who come to us from foreign shores. 
That among the Germans particularly, among 
the Irish, perhaps, as well, there is a tendency 
not to assimilate with American character 
and American customs, but to preserve their 
distinctiveness, to transplant, indeed, on 
American soil European ideas concerning 
the Church, concerning the Sabbath, and 
concerning other things; and we say in 
America that this separateness of one class 
of people from the bulk of the people is an 
anomaly. So we say, let the Germans cease 
to be Germans, let the Scandinavians cease 
to be Scandinavians, let the Irishmen cease 
to be Irishmen, and let them feel and act as 
though they were Americans. We want the 
American idea to expel the European idea, 
the German idea, and out of these hetero- 



73 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



geneous elements make a homogeneous mass. 
The Negro is distinct from us ; nevertheless, 
he is here, and' on the part of the colored 
man there came about an inclination to sepa- 
rate himself from the white man, which dat- 
ed from the close of the war ; and what we 
want to do is to get the American idea in the 
Negro — that he is an American citizen ; that 
race counts for nothing, and manhood for 
every thing. We have the greatest problem 
on our hands in the next twenty years tliat 
we have ever liad. The self-assertion of 
some is becoming manifest. What we want 
to do is to devise those means and those 
measures which will bring those men to feel 
that, in common with other American citi- 
zens, these liberties began in the war. It 
has cemented us as nothing else could; the 
Revolutionary War made a national senti- 
ment, and so did tlie War of 1812; in the 
War of the Rebellion there was a beginning 
of this development of a common sentiment, 
because in that struggle the colored man 



participated with the white man. There 
sprang up on the part of the colored man 
toward the white man a sympathy, and also 
on the part of the white man toward tlie col- 
ored man. So that war resulted in a unifi- 
cation of feeling as nothing else could have 
done. In the emancipation of the slaves of 
the Nortli, it was done in the first place by 
individual States, and when it came to the 
emancipation of the slaves of the South, it 
was the hand of the nation, and the colored 
man looked upon the national law as his lib- 
erator. He knew something about the nation 
and a national feeling, though he belonged in 
South Carolina or Georgia ; and that he be- 
longed to the United States. This feeling 
must go on until he shall realize that he is 
not only an American citizen, but also until 
he have a broad and intelligent sense of all 
the duties involved in that high prerogative. 
He must be made to feel that he must fear 
nothing because he is a black man, and he is 
to expect no favor because he is a black man. 



8. THE NEGRO IN AMERICA: HIS SPECIAL WORK. 



EEV. J. C. PEIOE, A.M., 

President Zion "Wesley Institute, Salisbury, N. 0. 



THE providential government of God is 
an established fact. Every individual, 
race, and age contributes to the well-being 
and happiness of mankind by the due per- 
formance of peculiar and specified work. 
Paul, Bacon, and Shakespeare each did his 
work as no other man could have done. 
The dispersed Jews are the chosen deposit- 
aries of God's truth, and the peculiar race 
trained for the religious education of the 
world. 

The Greeks in their culture and art. the 
Romans in their civilization and laws, hand- 
ed down distinct benefits to the nations that 
have succeeded them. 

To say that the American Negro has a 
peculiar work is not startling. 

The first glimpses of our history in this 
country make it evident that our mission 
here is providential and peculiar. Although 
every page of this history, from 1620 to 
1863, is written in blood and tears, it was 
the carrj^ing out of a Divine plan — the exe- 
cution of a part of the great work of God. 
Some one may ask. Can you look at your 
ancestors torn from their native land, see 
children separated from parents and wives 
from husbands, and say it was God's plan ? 
Can you bring to mind the horrors of the 
"middle passage," and then follow the 
wrongs, cruelties, and inhumanities of more 



than two centuries, and say it is God's way? 
I answer, Yes. But while I recognize an 
end in view, I do not commend the means to 
that end. But I would say to the " trader 
in human flesh," as Joseph said to his con- 
science-smitten brethren, "It was not you 
that sent me hither, but God." The slave- 
trader meant evil, but God intended it f )r 
good. In this, the wrath of men is to praise 
him. 

In the seventeenth century it was almost 
universally admitted that the Negro had a 
" special work " in this country. It is not 
unreasonable to say that he has, under new 
developments, a special work in the nine- 
teenth century. But how did he perform 
the former? 

The drained marshes, cultivated higlilands, 
fertile plantations, statelj'' mansions, and rail- 
ways of the South attest that it was xuell 
done. 

But we would be more zealous and ear- 
nest and laborious in that wliich is yet to be 
done, than in that which is done. 

The receding past, despite its unpleasant- 
ness and bitter expense, brings the consola- 
tion of a work completed through a Divine 
injunction. 

The present, with its accompanying priv- 
ileges and duties, is not without its encour- 
agement. And, notwithstanding the solemn 



THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 



73 



responsibilities that " loom up " amid tlie 
" uncertaiuties of the future," we feel tliat 
there ia " guidance for our footsteps and in- 
spiration for our work." 

But 3'ou ask, Wiiat is the work? "Whence 
comes its peculiarity ? This question seems 
unnecessary, when we reflect a moment on 
American history, interwoven as ii has been 
with that of the Americanized African. 

The degradation arising from centuries of 
enslavement cannot be removed in a score of 
years. Very often the injury of a moment 
is only remedied by years of careful atten- 
tion. The heavy shackles on the limbs of 
the slave were tit emblems of the heavier 
bonds of Ignorance and superstition on the 
soul. These darkened intellects, blunted 
morals, and distorted characters of nearly 
seven millions of people, are now to be en- 
lightened, quickened, and riglii;ed. Who are 
to do it ? Let us try to find out. Will the 
Southeru white people do it? We think 
not. 

The " pecuhar institution " made a line of 
demarkation between the white man and the 
black man m that section, if not in other 
sections. It told the white man he must not 
come in social or personal contact with the 
Negro. Hence the teaching and preaching 
among colored people in the South is not 
done by the white men and women of that 
section. 

Many of them desire to see the colored 
people educated; and by individual dona- 
tions and ttirough legislation they contribu- 
ted to this end. This has been witnessed in 
the work of Zion Wesley Institute, at Salis- 
bury, N". C, and is also seen in the annual 
appropriation for Atlanta University in 
Georgia. But they do not think that they 
are to come into personal contact with the 
Negro and do this work. 

Will the whites of the South do it? 
Northern philanthropists have contributed to 
the work among the freedmen' with a gen- 
erosity that is most commendable. They 
have sent their rnillions into the South. But 
they, even, feel that they are not to do this 
work by personal contact with the colored 
man. 

I gratefully acknowledge that many noble, 
self-sacrificing men and women (too much 
praise cannot be given them) went into the 
South during and after the war to lift up the 
fallen. They have accomplished a glorious 
work. We always welcome them. 

Many of them, in doing this work, were in- 
sulted, persecuted, and some had to escape 
for their hves. Others were ostracised. 
Men, their wives and daughters, were con- 
sidered disreputable, were not allowed into 
white society, simply because they taught 
Negro boys and girls. Many could not 
stand this ostracism, and consequently they 
either returned home or engaged in what 
they considered more congenial business. 



God be praised for the good men and the 
good women who proved equal to tlie emer- 
gency 1 But are these toachers and preach- 
ers doing the bulk of the educational and 
religious work in the South? With the ex- 
ception of the colleges and universities con- 
ducted by white men, (and many of those are 
controlled by white and colored men,) the 
educational work in the Southern cities, 
towns, and rural districts is carried on by 
colored men and women. 

Again, the Churches in the South, like the 
generality of those in the North, are separate 
— one for the white and one for the colored 
people. So the colored ministers are the re- 
ligious instructors for the millions of their 
people. 

The whites who are engaged in the South- 
ern work are just helping the Negroes do it. 

The four millions have grown to nearly 
seven millions. To uplift this people is 
whose special work? I only voice your 
sentiments when I say that this great work, 
in all of its increasing proportions — as far as 
personal contact is concerned — is to be done 
by the At'rico-Americans whose training tits 
them for teachers and leaders among their 
people. 

They are to mold the sentiment, deter- 
mine the course, and shape the future of 
this race. 

The solution of the vexing Negro problem 
is to come from within hiui rather than from 
witliout. 

The Negro himself, both by inward reso- 
lution and external irrepressibility, is to solve 
his own problem. Our relation to the Negro 
and our knowledge of him argue our fitness 
for his reform and regeneration by the Word 
and Spirit of God. 

We must lead on in the great work com- 
mitted to our charge. Every day of added 
intelligence, every trained young man or 
woman, every school-house, every coUpge or 
university, adds to our power to do th.is 
work. Under the guidance of God a pros- 
pect opens before us unequaled in attractions 
and not excelled in mighty possibilities. 

That the Negro is to be the future edu- 
cator of his race, no unbiased mind will 
deny. This truth comes to the present gen- 
eration with great force. A score of years 
has brought to them advantages which were 
withheld from the generation preceding us, 
in whose footsteps we now tread. They, nor 
we, must no longer grovel in the sins in 
which they were once taught to indulge. 
But instructed as to the errors of the past, 
aroused to the duty of the present, and di- 
rected to the prospect of the future, these 
once debased souls will aspire to and prac- 
tice what good men love and God approves. 

But wliy attach so much importance to 
the education of nearlj"- seven millions of 
poor, ignorant men and women, almost lost 
amid Ibrty-three millions, rich in learning 



74 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



and iadependent in wealth ? To what spe- 
cific ends is it to be directed? Many every 
way. 

First, Tliese millions have souls that can 
be better and more readily saved through an 
intelligent apprehension of the way of salva- 
tion. 

Secondly, It may be that an opportunity 
through this education will be given the 
Qjiouse to return some favors of the ridiculing 
lion. 

Tliirdly, There are ends immediately affect- 
ing us as a people. Chief among these is 
self-duty. 

Self-preservation is instinctive and pre- 
eminent as a law in man's nature. There- 
fore a knowledge of duty owed to ourselves 
is a vital constituent in the development of 
any people. That tlie freedmen should be 
without this linovvledge is natural. They 
were saturated with the doctrine that all 
their duties and actions had reference to tlie 
well-being of their masters — so-called. What 
did they know of self-duty when they had 
no self? What did they know about the re- 
sponsibility of family, or . the training of 
children ? The " peculiar institution " taught 
them that they had no family — no children. 
They did not even concern themselves about 
the coarse food they ate nor the ragged gar- 
ments they wore. 

How could they learn self-duty ? 

Emancipation, of course, exploded the doc- 
trine of involuntary and unrequited servi- 
tude to another, but it did not teach them 
the duties they owed to themselves. But 
proper training will enable them to see 
that they owe duties to themselves as well 
as to the brotherhood of men. 

Ignorance on this point is a great obstacle 
to the progress of any people. It will occa- 
sion useless clashing of ideas, a jarring, a 
restlessness, a cherished confusion out of 
which can come no order. 

Education aids men in learning the true 
relation they bear to others; "for man is no 
isolated being. The love, friendship, and 
pity of which he is capable, kindle into a 
holy flame only when fired by the sparks 
from a kindred breast." 

Again, the peace and quiet of the country 
— politically, I mean — the cessation of per- 
secution, fraud, and bloodshed, especially in 
certain parts of this country, are to be se- 
cured tlirough this "special work.". The 
sudden enfranchisement of the Negro, bow- 
ever necessary, is considered a doubtful good 
by some of his friends and many of his foes. 

It has distracted the country, caused bitter 
controversies, and occasioned thousands to 
lose their lives. 

This suffrage, however, cannot now be 
withdrawn. The ballot cannot be put into 
the hands of an ignorant man, even, and then 
taken away by his own vote. 

But by increased intelligence we can pre- 



pare the voter for a judicious use and exer- 
cise of his great "weapon and shield of de- 
fense." For the safety of a country — espe- 
cially of a republic — the perpetuity of its 
glory and the stabihty of its institutions are 
commensurate with the intelligence and mo- 
rality of its citizens, whether they be from 
the " Emerald Isle " or in the " Sunny South." 

"The danger," said Mr. Garfield, in his 
inaugural address, " which arises from igno- ■ 
ranee in the voter cannot be denied. We 
have no standard by which to measure the 
disaster that may be brought upon us hj ig- 
norance and vice in the citizen, when joined 
to corruption and fraud in the suffrage." 

For the present alarming ignorance we are 
not responsible. But it is a part of our 
" special work " to see that our succeeding 
generation does not enter the political arena 
" blinded by ignorance and corrupted by 
vice." The power that creates can destroy. 

The Negro occasioned the greatest civil 
war of modern times ; and his fidelity to the 
Union decided that momentous issue. 

He has made a yawning chasm between 
the North and South, which can only be 
bridged as he is enlightened and made a 
better citizen. 

His citizenship has lashed the waters of 
American politics into fury, and they can 
only be quieted as his good conduct, mel- 
lowed and softened by culture, exclaims, 
" Peace, be still." 

But intellectual culture without heart cult- 
ure may be a curse instead of a blessing. 

It has been truly said that " men may be 
as cultivated as Robespierre, and yet become 
as dark-minded and desperate as he. They 
may be as polished as was Dr. Webster, and 
may be as wicked." 

Slavery deadened the Negro's moral sensi- 
bility, but it could not destroy it. It lived 
in spite of the constant and purposed per- 
versions to which it was subjected, because 
it was inbreathed by God. 

But what the master — so-called — could 
not destroy, he turned into an opposite di- 
rection. Avarice prompted him to change 
the whole current of the Negro's morality, 
and make it take a backward course. For 
more than two hundred and fifty years the 
Negro was told by precept and by example 
to call wrong right, evil good, and immoral- 
ity morality. 

To correct these accumulated wrongs of 
centuries is a part of this " special work." 

Men must now be taught a morality that 
is consistent, to say the least. It must not 
consist of formal rules that may be suspend- 
ed and even violated at will. It must be 
such as will transform the character as well 
as change the outward conduct. 

The Negro must have instruction in that 
morality which declares that every species 
of vice must be hated because it is vice; 
and virtue must be loved in all her forms 



THE NEORO IN AMERICA. 



75 



because it is virtue. He must know through 
our example and precepts that crimes are 
not only liable to civil puuiHlmient, but that 
tiiey are also disgraceful; that on account of 
ii iiigh moral sentiment in society, the con- 
demnation of his fellows will be as much 
feared as grated Jails or walled peniteutiaries. 
For (to paraphrase the words of Sumner on 
peace and war) there is no morality that is 
not honorable, and Uiere is no immorality 
that is not dishonorable. 

But morality is only a fruit of true religion. 
Therefore our work as ministers of the 
New Testament cannot be overestimated. 
While our commission is as far-reaching as 
humanity, circumstances often limit the 
preaching of some to a race or country. 
Such is a feature of our special work. 

Of the multitudes of our people among 
the mountains, in tlie valleys, and in the 
plains of South-land, each soul is worth 
more than worlds. Yet many are lost for 
want of teachmg, or through incorrect 
teaching, as to Bible truth. And as the dark 
struggles with the intellectual dawn, they look 
through the gloom of the scarcely unbroken 
uight of ignorance, and discern advancing 
that which will bring them to the light of 
the Gospel, and break unto them the bread 
of everlasting life. We cannot disappoint 
them, but must go to their rescue, and lead 
them forth unto the highway of holiness, 
that they, too, may join the white-robed 
ranks who, with the inspiring ensign of the 
Cross, the undented sliield of faith, and the 
invincible sword of the Spirit, are sweeping 
with irresistible iriumph toward the city of 
the living God. This is our '' sp(5cial work." 
But it is not bounded by the area of eleven 
Southern States, nor circumscribed by the 
twenty-two hundred thousand square miles 
of American territory. 

Through the mysterious method of God's 
providence this work stretches across the 
boimdless, raging sea; and connects with it 
a whole continent — the largest in the world. 

In their land no Star of Bethlehem points 
to the Redeemer of men. Its inhabitants sit 
in the darkness unpenetrated by the light of 



the Cross. But He who said " Go preach my 
Gospel to every creature," wills that these 
two hundred and fifty millions shall come 
from bondage to liberty, from the power of 
Satan to the power ol God. 

Vying nationalities may extend their ter- 
ritorial possessions in Africa through wars 
and commerce-; the wicked trader in human 
flesh may visit her to increase his ill-goiteu 
gain ; and the explorer may tread the tangled 
maze of her unknown interior that he may 
enlarge geographical knowledge and pave 
the way for civihzation. But it remains 
with us to save the immortal souls of her 
people through the peaceful agencies of edu- 
cation, the Word, and the Christian ministry 
made effectual by the Holy Ghost. 

When " girded" and enlightened, with the 
torch of intelligence in one hand and that of 
Christianity in the other, neither the magni- 
tude of the work nor the perils that may at- 
tend it will deter the American Negro. 

Men brave the treacherous deep to obtain 
African gold ; they expose themselves to 
her malaria for her ivory; and for a few 
feet of African soil they crimson her land 
with the best of foreign and native blood — 
even that of kings and princes. 

There is something more precious than 
the gold, more excellent than the ivory, for 
which to suffer — to die, if die we must. A 
continent teeming with millions is to be 
snatched from endless perdition. A land 
wronged for centuries must be righted. A 
country whose fertile streams are emblem- 
atic of her outpoured blood and streaming 
tears must be healed and consoled. Then 
our " special work" is grand. Whether we 
view it in the uplifting of the seven millions 
in America, or the ultimate reform and re- 
generation of two liundred and fifty millions 
in Africa, this work is grand. Grand in it- 
self, grand in its object, grand in possibili- 
ties, grand in final results, grand in the 
crowns which shall reward it — crowns 
whose brightest gems shall be the sparkling 
"tear-drops of penitence, shed by some lone 
pilgrim whom we led to the Cross of Christ 
our Lord." 



9. THE FREEDMEN PROGRESSING. 



REV. J. C. HARTZELL, D.D. 



THE progress of the Negroes in America 
since emancipation has been marvelous. 
They came out of slavery poor in body, mind, 
and soul. Their bodies were cursed with 
generations of degradation ; not of labor — 
for that, if followed as it should be, is enno- 



bling — but of unnatural labor, where every 
refinement of taste and habit was sacrificed 
to ihe demand for muscular endurance. Their 
minds were cursed with generations of en- 
forced ignorance. Their souls, those inner 
sanctuaries of human instinct and purity, 



76 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



where dwells the image of God, and out of 
■whicli flow the holiest and best forces of life 
— even these had, by generations of cruel 
bondage, been belittled in capacity, and 
warped in sentiment, and lowered in instinct, 
until, in not a few respects, the distinctions 
between right and wrong were lost sight of 
in practical life. To the Negro in slavery, 
true marriage, except at the will of the mas- 
ter, was unknown. Among the masses the 
Negro slave woman was taught that for her 
there was no virtue, and her mission in slav- 
ery was to propagate her species for the 
auction block 1 And this in Christian Amer- 
ica for two hundred and fifty years I 

To understand any thing of the progress 
of this race since emancipation, we must look 
into the awful deptlis of the moral state in 
which freedom found them. I do not forget 
tlie work of Clu'istian missionaries among the 
slaves of the South ; much good was done by 
them, but only a few comparatively were 
reached, and with even these the funda- 
mental demands of virtue were subject to 
the accident of the master's whims or neces- 
sities respecting his property. 

With only a few individual or family ex- 
ceptions in a neighborhood, the great body 
of the Negroes came out of slaverj'- absolute- 
ly penniless, and wir.h scarcely enough rags 
to cover their nakedness; with every influ- 
ence of the Church and State and commerce 
and social life opposed to their freedom, and 
determined that, if not slaves, their future, of 
right, ought to be and must be one of de- 
pendent subserviency to the white race. 

They were given tiie ballot in the midst of 
their ignorance and poverty, and were ex- 
pected to stand with their [ew " carpet-bag " 
and "scallawag" friends for the maintenance 
of the national authority in the South against 
the combined wisdom, wealth, and states- 
manship of what was, a few years before, a 
mighty confederacy. 

Whatever progress the freedmen have 
made has been chiefly because of the splen- 
did qualities they possess, in spite of not 
only what slavery could do, but in spite, also, 
of many very great disadvantages since free- 
dom. Whatever helps have come to them 
they have laid hold of with tremendous faitli 
and tenaciiy. G-o into the schools established 
by Northern benevolence all over the South. 
In them to-day are more than twenty thou- 
sand young Negro men and women. Nearly 
all of these ;ire there by tlieir own exertions, 
or by those of their parents or relatives as 
poor as themselves. They Hre climbing up 
into the higher realms of learning; the silver 
tones of their orators and the enchanting 
music of their songsters are iieard in all that 
South-land; their mathematicians are com- 
muning with Newton, and their metaphysi- 
cians are mastering Hamilton. Leaving these 
schools, their young men are entering the 
pulpit, are on tlie rostrum, and in tne school- 



room; and they are there to lead. Their 
young women are teaching, or becoming 
wives of men worthy of them, and doing 
their part in building up Christian homes. 
Go into the public schools of the South. 
Eight hundred thousand Negro boys and 
girls are tliere. One hour in any such school 
sweeps to the wind all pro-slavery theories 
about the Negro's capacity to learn. It is a 
sad fact that a large proportion of the freed- 
men are yet but little beyond wiiere freedom 
found them ; but that so many should have 
advanced at all, and that so large a propor- 
tion of those who liave advaiiced should have 
gone so far, is simply marvelous. Where the 
best are to-A&j, the great majority will be in 
the near future. 

They are acquiring much in the fields of 
mechanical skill and activity, and in the self- 
respect and independence which these bring. 
In many portions of the South they are not 
only the field-laborers, but they are the car- 
penters and bricklayers and blacksmiths! 
They are engineers and head-men on multi- 
tudes of the smaller plantations, and on some 
of the larger ones. I'hey are gaining prop- 
erty. They own fifteen millions of dollars 
in Louisiana. They pay taxes on five hun- 
dred thousand dollars of property in Atlanta, 
Georgia ; and in that whole State they pos- 
sess, probably, ten miflions of dollars in real 
estate. That means nearly one hundred 
millions of dollars in property for the Ne- 
groes of the South, acquired mostly since the 
war. That is not much for six mfllions five 
hundred thousand people, but it is a good 
beginning. 

The Negro is improving morally. Go to 
their churches all over the Soutli, and with 
the eye and heart and common-sense of a 
friend and philanthropist, study their work 
in church-building, Sunday-school oi'ganiza- 
tion, and administering discipline. For ihir- 
teen years I have studied tliis people in every 
part of the South, and seen ihem in their 
cabins and in their best and poorest church- 
es. I have studied their weaknesses and 
follies and successes, and if I know any thing 
of human nature or human progress I nuist 
say that vast multitudes of the Negroes of 
the South, to-day, are leading virtuous and 
Christian lives, and that these, under the lead 
of a fair proportion of their ministry, are 
powerfully leavening the whole mass. 

For whatever the Negro in America is to- 
day, in morals or poverty or ignorance, the 
white people of the nation are largely re- 
sponsible. Slavery is gone, with its accursed 
efEects. Let now the whole nation do for tlie 
Negro, as a free man, just what ought to be 
done for him, in s}'-mpathy and helpfulness, 
if he was a white man in our midst, and as 
needy, and another generation or two will 
see "tlie Africo-American in oiu* nation an 
assimilated part of American enterprise, 
thought, and success. 



THE NEGRO IN AMEBICA. 



77 



10. A PLEA FOR PRACTICAL EDUCATION FOR THE NEGRO. 



REV. C. K. MARSHALL, D.D,, 
Pastor Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Vicksbui-g, Miss. 



EDUCATIOX is the suggestive and prolific 
theme that seems just now to dominate 
every department of human inquiry. At 
this seemingly late period in the progress of 
tie races and tlieir education, whatever it 
may have been, it is a singular fact that, 
what to teach ? how to teach ? when to teach ? 
and whom to teach? are still unsettled ques- 
tions. A widening field, greater facilities, 
higher standards, more thorough and exact 
knowledge, the growth of tiie sciences, the 
thirst for the uncasted, and the desire of 
enlarging usefulness, are, together, obvious 
characterisiics of the times. They must, 
therefore, greatly tend to the entire discon- 
tinuance or great modification of the 
methods of the past, and suggest new 
measures, new or peculiar specialties, adapt- 
ed to the rising demands of the world at 
large. Whole continents are asking the 
English-speaking nations for their alphabet 
and first readers, and for educated teachers 
who can and will devote their lives to their 
instruction. We are accustomed to think it 
the duty of certain persons to go abroad as 
messengers of the Cross and touchers of re- 
ligion. But teaching the thrilling signifi- 
cance of the simplest elements of knowledge 
may,- perhaps, be found as much the obliga- 
tory calling of many gifted and cultured 
persons as the preaching of Christ is the 
duty of others. It ma}'-, also, be the solemn 
duty and life-work of some to teach the vari- 
ous branches of manual labor — farming, navi- 
gation, and mechanism. The world's great- 
est needs lie along those paths, and civili- 
z iCion marks its onward march by the 
triumphs of the plow, the keel, and the loom. 

Much has been sail, written, and done 
for tlie spread of the knowledge and posses- 
sion of this desirable civilization. Still, so 
vast is the field that nearly noi.hing seems 
as yet to have boen accomplishe'l. 

If we turn our thoughts to the Africans in 
America ami in Africa, we shall find our- 
selves no little poriilcxed to solve the ques- 
tions respecting tli-ir education in the 
material arts and in ihe various and indis- 
pjnsable branches of the mechanic arts. 

Therefore it seems to me that mechanical 
phil isophy, and practical education in con- 
sti-ucting, making, and the repairing of all 
sorts of things, from a cradle to a palace, 
from a fish-hook to a steam-ship, from a hob- 
nail to a telegraph, from a sewing-machine 
t) a reaping-machine, from ateleplione to a 
locomotive, ought to be tauiiht the young 
Negroes ; and that with a direct purpose of 



their going to Africa to aid in working out 
its great destiny. But if no colored man 
should ever again go to Africa, his develop- 
ment at home must be sought in the mechan- 
ical branches of knowledge. Should he, 
however, in such numbers as wisdom would 
dictate, see fit to go as an educated mechan- 
ician, who can tell the influence he could 
exert as a collateral force to missionary 
effort ? What could make a stronger im- 
pression upon an intelligent African chief, 
king, or ruler, than to see a youthful immi- 
grant set to work and build a neat residence. 
He has planned and drawn all the parts of 
the house himself — the architect and builder 
— and shown his superior attainments in the 
most practical and convincing way. Or, if 
one were to introduce the American loom, 
show its movements, prove his ability to 
teach the native its uses; and, perhaps, the 
way to make looms, and repair them when 
out of order ; would such an advent among 
the natives — interior tribes, and progressive 
inquirers — make no impression in favor of a 
higher life and nobler ends to be attained? 
In America, trade learning is no longer what 
it was fifty years ago. A carpenter then 
made with his own hands all the curious 
and artistically wrought materials in the 
construction of an edifice. A first-rate 
workman had a fortune in his trade. But 
on this continent carpentry is a lost art. A 
piece of timber is now run through a mys- 
terious machine, and it comes out a door, a 
panel, a console, a blind, a spiral molding, a 
mullion, or a modillion, and the attendant and 
feeder is not the carpenter — but the machine. 
So of every other branch of the mechanio 
arts. Watches were once made by hand, 
hair-spring, main-spring, chain, and regu- 
lator — all. Now nothing of the sort is known 
on this continent. All watches are machine 
made. This renders an African watch fac- 
tory a possibility, even on the loose and 
absurd theory that the African could not 
lenrn to make a watch as a Switzerland 
journeyman does. It also shows the ease 
with which advanced mechanic arts may be 
introduced into Africa, where the while 
man cannot survive the climate. 

It matters not whether the Negro goes to 
Africa or not in large numbers. He should 
be put upon the path of his best develop- 
ment, and then left to choose the field of 
labor according to rising circumstances. 
The locomotive, the telegraph, the sewing- 
machines, and other kindred presents made 
by our government some years ago to Japan, 



78 



CHIilSTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



did more to open the eyes and hearts of that 
people than a hundred missionaries might, 
possibly, without those forerunners, have 
accomplished in many years. The same will 
be true, has been true already, in a small 
way, in Africa. The Japanese were ad- 
vanced in mechanism, and only needed 
models. The African — almost the whole 
continent — is yet to be inducted into the 
proper knowledge of those arts. 

I am not now saying any thing for the 
general colonization of our Negroes in 
Africa. That is forever to he a matter of 
their oion unbiased choice. But I do believe 
that Africa is to be civilized and Christian- 
ized by Afiicans. Thousands of our Negro 
students at academies, colleges, and univer- 
sities will find their highest honors, greatest 
pleasures, and most gratifying usefulness in 
teaching the natives of the father-laud: not 
only the glorious Gospel of the Adorable 
One, but, also, how to forge at the anvil, 
turn at the lathe, file at the vice, mold for 
the casting; in a word, to construct a steam- 
engine, to manufacture hoes, plows, shovels, 
scythes, or any other article in brass, wood, 
silver, or gold, the people may need; nor 
does it make any difference if we are told 
that all these things, and all other possible 
articles of merchandise, will be made in 
America and Europe and pushed into Africa 
cheaper than they can be made there. So 
are they now made in the Northern Stales 
of tills continent and pushed southward, and 
yet the South needs and maintains innumer- 
able mechanics and shops and factories all 
over its broad expanse. 

Africa needs a host of intelligent, well- 
trained Negro mechanics in every branch of 
business known to the white artisans. That 
country is soon to be webbed from east to 
west, and from north to south, with rail- 
roads; and a call will be made for Negro 
engineers, conductors, clerks, book-keepers, 
express officers, and mail-carriers, post- 
masters, and responsible Negro men to take 
paj-ing offices and good positions, and enjoy 
the opportunity of putting their acquirements 
where they will do the most good and bring 
to all concerned the largest returns. 

The Negro is capable of all this work. 
Instances, not a few, can be cited in the 
South, of his excelling in law and medicine, 
in architectural and mechanical drawings; 
of his leading the business over white com- 
petitors in horseshoeing in a large city; 
bdssing the molding floor in a large 
foundry; commanding equal wages with the 
best white carpenters; painting, shoe- 
making, engineering, book-binding, tailoring, 
etc., and all this in the teeth of organized 
" Trades Unions," that resisted his progress 
to their utmost. 

Now, the momentous inquiry arises as to 
how the young freedmen, thirsting for 
knowledge and longing for fields of useful- 



ness, are to become fitted for these special 
labors — manly, reformatory, civilizing, en- 
nobling labors — to which I have directed 
your attention. True, we have colleges with 
agricultural and mechanical appendages. 
But it seems to me that the Negro of the 
coraitig time demands and needs a mechan- 
ical college, with a grammar-school atiacli- 
ment, where one may win his parchment as 
an accomplished artisan, and yet learn 
enough of niathematic grammar and correct 
English composition to constitute a solid 
foundation for a future superstructure, if 
inclined to erect it, with his own industry 
and application. 

As for agriculture, there are now hundreds 
of well-taught tillers of the soil, whose serv- 
ices could be commanded for any emer- 
gency, and yet these are passing away. If, 
however, we can answer the momentous 
inquiry as to how we are to teach the young 
Negro the mysteries of a machine-shop, and 
prepare him to teach others — and he is 
capable, if the opportunity be given him — 
then a great mountain will have been rolled 
from the door of the Dark Continent, and 
new fields of immense usefulness be opened 
to hundreds of brave and Christian colored 
men — and the welfare of that continent as 
well as tliis will be greatly advanced. 

This, then, brings home the greatest ques- 
tion to be considered under the subject for 
tlie day, '' The Negro in America." On thi3 
continent he must be qualified for every part 
he is to act on hfe's great stage, for at least 
one or t'wo generations to come. I am not 
unmindful that, in a \erj moderate and in- 
adequate waj', some attempts have been 
made to teach a few colored boys trades, 
and tram them in the annexes of colleges, 
but if they have not all proved failures 1 am 
misinformed. I would reverse that order 
and annex a grammar-school to a multi- 
farious collegiate machine-shop, and gradu- 
ate intelligent mechanics. One Inn dred 
such graduates will do more for the ui^ifting 
of Africa in the next century than can be 
accomplished by a thousand university grad- 
uates who shall have accomplished the 
highest curriculum in languages, sciences, 
and polite literature. Not that I oppose the 
college proper or the university. I like 
them all. But we may produce a lopsided 
generation of aspirants for more places than 
call for them, and so do harm. 'J'his is one 
of the hardest problems we have to solve in 
connection with tlie future of the Negro 
race, both here and elsewhere. How shall 
we train the Negro to be a first-rate me- 
chanic? Whoever shall answer that ques- 
tion is the man the 200,000,000 of people in 
Africa will honor, and whose name will be 
held in reverence among them, as long as 
the morning sun shall salute her mountain 
peaks and her valleys resound with anthems 
of civilization and religion. 



V. ILLITERAC!. WEALTH, PIUPEeiSM, 



1. THE RELATION OF EDUCATION TO WEALTH AND MORAL- 
ITY AND TO PAUPERISM AND CRIME. 



DEXTER A. HAWKINS, A.M., 
Of the New York Bar. 



ONE of the most interesting and important 
questions in social science is how to in- 
crease wealth and morality to a maximum, 
and to reduce pauperism and crime to a 
minimum. 

This is a topic especially appropriate for 
investigation by the National Educational 
Assembly, a body whose chief aim is the im- 
provement of society through a better educa- 
tion of the people. 

One set of philosophers, led by Benjamin 
Franklin, proclaim that the surest road to 
wealth is industry and economy. But 
another answers that the Chinese, for two 
thousand years, have excelled all other races 
and nations in these two virtues, and yet are 
distinguished, not for their wealth, but rather 
for the poverty of the great majority of their 
people. 

Sometliing, then, besides mere industry and 
economj' is required even to amass wealth. 

The great religious reformers and propliets, 
as Buddha, Confucius, Plato, our Saviour, 
Mohammed, and Luther, have held up re- 
ligion as the panacea for all moral obliquity^ 
and j'et history declares that the ages and 
countries most fervid with religion — as, for ex- 
ample, Europe from the tenili to the fifteenth 
century, have been pervaded with crime. 

Tiie great Christian Churches of the Roman 
Catholic rite and of the Greek rite declare 
that "Ignorance is the mother of devotion." 
and that devotion to these churches is the 
safety of humanity. Yet the seat of tiie 
Greek Church, Russia, where nine tenths of 
the population are illiterate, last year made 
the world shudder at the barbaric crimes 
committed in that empire upon the brethren of 
the Founder of Christianity, tlie Hebrews: 
the most intehigent and thriving subjects of 
tlie temporal head of the Greek Church. 

Ireland, for a thousand years one of the 
most faitliful devotees of the Church of 



Rome, has just completed the entire curric- 
ulum of crime, from refusal to pay debts to 
murder iu the first degree, and made both 
life and property unsafe within her borders. 

It is clear, then, that "ignorance and devo- 
tion ■' will not bring on the millennium. Evi- 
dently the problem of what will accomplish 
the most complete and efficient prevention 
of pauperism and crime, and produce the 
highest average increase of wealth and 
morality, i-i not yet solved. Its solution is 
difficult. 

One of tlie best teachers and most scholar- 
ly gentlemen that this country has produced 
often encouraged his pupils in their investi- 
gations by quoting to them from Terence the 
lines : 

" Nil tam difficile est 

Quin quaerendo investigari potest." 

" Nothing is so difficult but that by study it 
may be solved." 

This is as true in social problems as in 
those from mathematics. The importance 
of iliis question is ever pressing upon us, for 
the support of paupers and criminals, and the 
protection of society against the latter im- 
pose a burden upon society second only to 
that of war. 

In New York, for example, this burden, 
including, necessarily, police, criminal courts, 
reformatories, jails, penitentiaries, asylums, 
almshouses, and the poor outside of public 
institutions, amounts to over six millions of 
dollars a year; and that city contains only 
one fortieth of the population of the United 
States. 

I propose to treat of the relation of educa- 
tion to wealtli and pauperism, and to morality 
and crime ; and what kind of training is the 
surest and best safeguard against the two 
great social evils, patiperism and crime : and 
where this training is to be obtained. 



80 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IW COUNCIL. 



The Relation of Education to Wealth and 
I'auperism. 

As civilization advances the apparatus and 
operations of every-day life are becoming 
more and more expensive, on account of the 
constantly iucreasing and multiplying vi^ants 
of humanity. To-day even the rudest and 
simplest occupation — (arming — is carried on 
chiefly by machinery. The sharpened stick 
for planting and the forked tree for plowing 
are no loQger in use. A farm laborer of a 
hundred years ago, if suddenly dropped down 
upon a modern farm upon a Western prairie, 
could scarcely understand any thing that is 
going on. 

Even the plows, the harrows, the culti- 
vators, the drillers, tl;e sowers, the hoeing 
machines, the mowers, the reapers, the head- 
ers, the threshers, the winnowers, the very 
wagons and carts and harnesses, would each 
and all be a mystery to him; to say nothing 
of the more complicated appliances and the 
scientific processes required to convert the 
raw products of the field into food, clothing, 
and shelter. The treatment of the soil, the 
rotation of crops, the method of preserving 
and utilizing and marketing the harvests to 
advantage, all require knowledge. 

If this is true of farming, it is still more 
true of every other department of human in- 
dustry. 

In the days of Homer and Peifcles, Virgil 
and Augustus, Shakespeare and Queen Eliza- 
beth, cotton and wool, and flax and silk, 
were all spun and woven by hand, and 
sewed by handl Now a single machine 
tended by one skilled workman does the 
spinning that formerly required hundreds of 
busy hands and nimble fingers; another, 
tended by a single person, does the weaving 
that once demanded three or four hundred 
human beings ; a third will cut out forty or 
fifty garments at a time, and do it quicker 
than one could be cut by hand; a line of 
sewing-machines, run by steam or electricitj'-, 
will each do the work of twenty sewing-girls, 
and do it better. The hand labor in a pair 
of lady's fine kid boots formerly amounted to 
several dollars ; but now, aided by cunningly 
devised machines, tended by skilled work- 
men, it is only nine cents. This state of 
Focietj'- makes it difficult for an ignorant 
laborer to find a place to work at all, and 
when a place is found, he can scarcely earn 
enough in competition with his skilled com- 
petitors to keep soul and body together. He 
finds himself on every hand rejected or 
thrown out of employment because of his 
ignorance, unskillfulness, incompetency, and 
inability to do, or even to learn to do, things 
in the modern way. 

The net results of his rude industry com- 
pare with those of his trained rival in the 



same ratio that the quantity of grain trans- 
ported to market by the ignorant peasant of 
the last century on the back of his mule, in 
one end of a bag, and balanced by a stone of 
equal weight in the other so as not to slide 
off, compares with the amount transported 
by the intelligent farmer of the present day, 
who puts a whole crop into a freight car and 
makes coal and water roll it over a railroad 
track hundreds of miles in a single day. 

Thirty years ago I saw the Neapolitan 
peasants carrying their small, hand-made, 
bottle-shaped cheeses, in strings of two or 
three dozen, on their backs from the pas- 
tures of the Appeniues to the market in their 
beautiful city by the sea. 

Four years ago, while standing on the 
snowy crest of Pike's Peak, in the Rocky 
Mountains; fourteen thousand three hun- 
dred feet high, a railroad train in the valley 
below, but in full view, puffed across the 
broad acres of a cheese-ranch, the property 
of a son of New England. It halted at the 
door of his cheese factory, was soon loaded 
with the whole summer's product of his dairy, 
and then steamed away twenty-five hundred 
miles to New York,'where in a few days it 
delivered in perfect condition its tons of rich 
yellow freiglit, cheaper per pound than the 
Italian peasant was able to produce his and 
carry it a hundredth part of the distance. 
But the selection of the herds of cows for 
tills Colorado ranch, their care and manage- 
ment, the milking machines, the scientific 
processes of cooling and curdling the milk, 
and the preparation, pressing, preservingr, 
and boxing the cheeses, and their shipment, 
and the location, construction, and manage- 
ment of the railwaj' — all require knowledge. 

Can we determine how much this knowl- 
edge adds to the value of human labor? 

In 1870 the Commissioner of Education at 
Washington sent out a series of carefully 
drawn, comprehensive, and searching ques- 
tions, to the great centers of labor in all 
pans of the United States. These centers 
were so selected as to represent every kind 
of labor, from the rudest and simplest up to 
the most skilled. The object of the ques- 
tions was to determine the relative pro- 
ductiveness of literate and illiterate labor. 
I have tabulated, reduced, and generalized 
the answers so as to get at what seems to 
me to be the average result over the whole 
countrj'. This investigation — one of the 
most interesting ever made — brought clearly 
to light the following facts: 

1. That an average free common-school 
education, such as is provided in all the 
States where the free common school has 
become a permanent institution, adds fifty 
per cent, to the productive power of the 
laborer considered as a mere productive 
machine. 

2. That the average academical education 
adds one hundred per cent. 



ILLITERACY, WEALTH, PAUPERISM, AND CRIME. 



81 



3. That the average collegiate or universi- 
ty education adds from two to three hundred 
per cent, to his average annual produclive 
capacity, to say nothing of tlie vast increase 
to liis manhness — to his God-likeness. 

By the census of 1880 we had in the 
United States four million two hundred and 
four thousand three hundred and sixty-two 
(4.204,362) illiterate adults — white and 
colored. Now, putting their labor at the 
miuimura annual value of one hundred dol- 
lars each, (which is far below the average 
even for farm labor, while the wages of 
manufacturing operatives, including fifteen 
per cent, of women and children, as shown 
l)y the census of 1880, average in the whole 
country $345 each per j^ear,) and the annual 
loss to these persons — from the lack of at 
least a commou-school education — would be 
fifty dollars each. This, for the whole num- 
ber of four millions two hundred and forty 
thousand three liundred and sixty-two, is 
two hundred and ten mihions of dollars per 
year ; a sum twice as large as the entire 
annual expenditure for public education in 
the whole country. Tliis sum — two hundred 
and ten millions of dollars — is a clear annual 
loss, not only to these illiterates, but to the 
community, by reason of their illiteracy. 

A State filled with ignorant citizens is like 
a farm of pine-barrens, its crop is scarcely 
worth harvesting. Poverty clings to the 
illiterate closer than a brother. Like the 
fabled shirt of Nessus, this kind of poverty 
poisons and disables whomsoever it covers. 
Three quarters of these four millions two hun- 
dred and four thousand three hundred and 
sixty-two of illiterate adults, were in the late 
slave States, and their effect on the pro- 
duction and preservation of wealth there is 
shown b}"" the last censns. In ten of these 
States, notwithstanding their rich soil and 
mild climate, the assessed value of property 
in the ten years from 1870 to 1880 decreased 
twenty per cent. ; while in the State of 
Maine, with its universal education, notwitii- 
standing its thin, poor soil and cold climate, 
ilie wealth in the same period increased fif- 
teen per cent., and in the State oi New 
Hampshire, under like hard conditions of life, 
it increased eleven per cent. 

The late slave States complain of their in- 
ability to pay the expenses of free common 
schools, and they raised for public education 
ill 1880 only ten million eight hundred and 
eigiity-three thousand one liundred and fonr 
dollars ($10,883,104). The amount of the 
iinnual loss in these same States, from their 
labor being illiterate, is at least one hundred 
and fifty milhon dollars, ($150,000,000.) The 
extra productiveness of their laborers over 
what it is now would — had they been edu- 
cated, as in Maine and New Hampshire — 
establish and support free common schools 
nine months in tlie year for every child of 
the school age within their borders, and 



leave a surplus sufficient to support a free 
academy in every county and a free college 
in every State. 

Education is tlie key to wealth. Educated 
labor is not likely to be imposed upon; and 
is not given to strikes. It knows its reason- 
able and just rights, and maintains them in 
a legal and peaceable manner. 

The relative ability to gain a livelihood of 
the literate and illiterate in society, on a 
large scale, can best be determined by analy- 
ses of the censuses of different Stales and 
countries. Tliese, properly worked out and 
understood, will give us the naked facts of 
the relation of education and pauperism. 

A careful examination of the census of En- 
gland, Scotland, Ireland, and of the several 
countries on the continent of Europe, indi- 
cate that, other things being equal, pauper- 
ism is in the inverse ratio of the education 
of the mass of the people; that is, as educa- 
tion increases pauperism decreases, and as 
education decreases pauperism increases. 

In the Grand Duchy of Baden they put into 
operation, in 1854, a rigorous system of uni- 
versal, compulsory education in the element- 
ary branches. Tlie efl'ect in seven years 
upon pauperism was to reduce it twenty-five 
per cent. It has been calculated by statis- 
ticians and students of social science that 
ninety-six per cent, of pauperism could be 
exterminated by universal, compulsory edu- 
cation in the elementary brandies of knowl- 
edge and industr}'-. 

But the elements of industry should be 
taught in our schools as well as the elements 
of knowledge. This can be done without 
adding to the cost of the schools ; while it 
would increase vastly the practical value to 
the masses of their education. The Kinder- 
garten method of training recognizes the 
necessity of industrial education and the ca- 
pacity and desire on the part of the very 
young to learn to do something. This ca- 
pacity and desire should be cultivated, de- 
veloped, and disciplined through the wliole 
course and for all classes in the public 
schools. Such a system of public education 
rigorously enforced would confine pauperism 
to tiiose without property and incapacitated 
for self-support by old age, or infirmity, or 
infancy, and having no relatives to take care 
of them. 

The exhaustive analysis of the census of 
1880 which the government is making will 
not be completed for some years ; but that 
of 1870 is before us, and the facts on this 
question, developed by each census, all go to 
establish the same principle ; so that either 
is a safe guide. In Pennsylvania, Ohio, and 
Illinois, three great central States, where 
self-support is not difficult, one in ten of the 
illiterates is a pauper, while of the rest of 
the population only one in three hundred is 
a pauper. In other words, in those three 
great central States, a given number of chil- 



83 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



dren suffered to grow up in ignorance produce 
thirty times as many paupers as when given 
an average common-scliool education. 

In 1870 a special investigation was made, 
in lifteeu States, of the inmates to the num- 
ber of seven thousand tliree hundred and 
ninety-eight of almsliouses and infirmaries. 
Of these, four thousand thi-ee hundred and 
twenty- seven, or nearly fifty-nine per cent., 
could not read and write : while in those fif- 
teen States the average percentage of illit- 
erates was only six per cent, of the whole 
population. From this six per cent, came 
that fifty-nine per cent, of the paupers ; or, 
to express it in another form, a given num- 
ber of children in those fifteen States, suf- 
fered to grow up in ignorance, produced 
twenty-two times as many paupers as the 
same number of children would if given a 
fair common-school education. 

Similar results may be obtained from the 
census of almost every country in Europe or 
America. 

We may safely say, then, that it is a gen- 
eral law of modern civilization that an illit- 
erate person is from twenty to thirty times 
as liable to become a pauper and a charge 
upon the public as is one with an average 
common-school education; and that the an- 
nual loss to the community, in the United 
Slates, in tlie productive power of the illit- 
erates, and in the support of paupers made 
such by illiteracy, is nearly if not quite equal 
to the amount tliat would be required to es- 
tablish and maintain a free common school 
the year round in every State in the Union, 
amply sufficient for the whole fifteen mill- 
ions of the children of the school age in the 
United States. 

The annual expense of maintaining pau- 
pers — ninety-six per cent, of whom have be- 
come such through lack of proper training 
while .young — is at least ten times as great 
as would have been the expense to the pub- 
lic of securing an education while young to 
each of these paupers sufficient to have en- 
abled ninety-six per cent, of them to support 
themselves instead of being a charge upon 
the public. 

Education leads naturally to industry, so- 
briety, and economy; hence it makes one 
conscious of the benefits resulting from these 
habits. 

Statistics proclaim in no uncertain voice 
that education is the surest preventive of pau- 
perism ; and that the expense of providing 
and applying in season this preventive 
would not be one tenth that now brought 
upon society by pauperism. 

The first incentive to action is self-sup- 
port—gaining a livelihood. This is the very 
basis of personal independence of individual 
character, respectability, and influence. The 
key to self-support is education. Money 
and labor, invested in education, are capital 
invested in such a manner tJiat the principal 



is absolutely safe, and the income large, 
sure, and promptly paid. The State should 
see to it that a reasonable investment of this 
kind is made in and for every child as it 
grows up. 

We bring nothing into the world except 
possibilities. It is said we carry nothii g 
out. I doubt that. Education once acquired 
inheres in the human mind and soul. It 
goes with them. We not only enjoy its 
benefits so long as this life lasts, but who 
can prove it separates from us at the begin- 
ning of the life to come ? The natural infer- 
ence is that it goes with us, and that the 
soul of a highly and properly cultivated man 
in the next world excels that of an ignoramus 
as much as " one star surpasses another star 
in glory." 

SECOND. 

The Relation of Education to Morality and 
Crime. 

It is said that crime came into the world 
with knowledge, and that had not man par- 
taken of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, 
ho never would have committed crime. A 
more correct way of stating the true rule is 
perhaps this: that so long as man remained 
a mere animal, withaut knowledge of right 
or wrong, or power of discrimination between 
good and evil, he could not commit crime 
any more than a brute beast could do it. 
Crime implies, in ihe actor, moral responsi- 
bility. But tiie moment man acquired the 
power to discrirainaie between right and 
wrong, good and evil, and Ijad bestowed 
upon him freedom of will sufficient to enable 
iiim to choose between good and evil, tl'cn 
for the first lime it became possible for liim 
to commit crime, or be guilty of sin. In 
other words, as soon as he became, in any 
proper sense, a rational, responsible being, 
and endowed with knowledge and with free- 
dom of will sufficient to direct and control 
liis own actions, and not before, it was proper 
to characterize his actions as criminal or in- 
nocent, according as they were or not in- 
fractions of law. 

The optimist may say that God, the Creator 
— the active personification of all good — hav- 
ing created man in his own image, as man's 
knowledge expands he necessarily increases 
in goodness and in tendency to right action. 

The pessimist may hold that God is sim- 
ply the personification of might, and that 
whatever he orders is right because of his 
omnipotent might; and tliat man, as he in- 
creases in knowledge, simply enlarges his 
power to do evil, without strengthening his 
desire to do good. Hence the late Cardinal 
Antonelli, who for a generation controlled 
tlie papal power, said to me in Rome, thirty 
years ago, in speaking of public education, 
that he thought it better for a child to grow 
up in ignorance than to be educated in sucli 



ILLITERACY, WEALTH, PAUPERISM, AND CRIME. 



83 



public scliools as tliose of Massachusetts. 
His theory seemed to be that his Ciiurch held 
a sort of exclusive patent foi- all right action ; 
and unless one obtained a license and came 
in under this patent, every act of life would 
necessarily tend only to evil. 

Another set of philosophers teach that 
mere knowledge is indifferent to right and 
wrong; and that man, to keep ihe track of 
righteousness, like a locomotive with steam 
up, must be guided by some superior, benev- 
olent, distinct, and outside power. 

But, theories aside, for all practical pur- 
poses the safest and surest method of invest- 
igation for us to pursue on this question is 
the inductive system of Lord Bacon. We 
must have recourse to the facts and follow 
their direction. Tiiese will give us the tend- 
ency of education. 

The question before us is. What is the ef- 
fect of education, such as is usually obtained 
in the schools of the community, upon mo- 
rality and crime ? Does it increase the one 
or the other? or does it diminish it? or does 
it have no effect at all upon it ? The statis- 
tics of the census will answer this question; 
for however we may prove on principle 
things ought to turn out, facts will show how 
they do actually turn out. The homely old 
adage, "The proof of the pudding is the eat- 
ing," is the safest guide. 

In France, in 1868, one half of the inhab- 
itants could not read nor write. Prom this 
half came ninety-five per cent, of the persons 
arrested for crime. From the other, the edu- 
cated half, came only five per cent. In other 
words, a given number of cliildren, suffered 
to grow up illiterate, produced nineteen 
times as many persons arrested for crime as 
the same number would if educated, at least 
to the e.ftent of the elementary branches. 

In the Grand Duchy of Baden, from 1854 
to 1861 — seven years — the government, by 
a rigorous system of universal, compulsory, 
elementary education, reduced the number 
of prisoners actually arrested fifty-one per 
cent., and the number of crimes committed 
fifty-four per cent. 

In the six New England States, in 1850, 
seven per cent, only of tiie inhabitants above 
ten years of age were unable to read and 
write ; and yet this seven per cent, pro- 
duced eighty per cent, of the criminals. Or, 
iu other words, a given number of children 
in New England, at that time, suffered to 
grow up illiterate, produced fifty-three times 
as many criminals as the same number 
would if educated to the extent of the cur- 
riculum of the pubhc schools. This fact is a 
complete vindication of the moral effect of 
the New England system of public education, 
Cardinal Antonelli to the contrary notwith- 
stJinding. 

In the State of New York, in 1880, the 
illiterates produced eight times their ^ro rata 
proportion of the criminals iu tlial State.; 



that is, a given number of children brought 
up illiterate, on the average produced eiglii 
times as many criminals as the same children 
would have produced if educated to the ex- 
tent of the curriculum of the public schools. 

In the city of New York, in 1870, among 
the illiterates, one ciime was committed for 
every three persons; while among the lit- 
erates there was only one crime to twenty- 
seven persons. Or, in otlier woi'ds, the ig- 
norant class in that city furnishes nine times 
the crutiinals they would if educated in the 
public schools. 

In the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in 
1870, the illiterates, acoording .to their num- 
bers, committed seven times as many crimes 
as the literate class. 

In Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, taken 
together, the illiterates committed ten times 
as many crimes, according to their numbers, 
as the literate class. 

Take the whole <xf the United States to- 
gether, according to the census of 1870, tlie 
illiterates committed ten times their pro rata 
proportion of crimes. 

In Pennsylvania, in the years 1879 and 
1880, one thirtieth of the population above 
ten years of age could neither read nor 
write, and this lone thirtieth committed one 
sixth part of the crimes, or nearly six times its 
proper proportion. But if we class with the 
illiterates the criminals who could barely read 
and write — but who had no education be- 
yond bare reading and writing — it will then 
appear that the one thirtieth of the population 
of Pennsylvania that is illiterate commits 
one third of the crime, or more than fourteen 
times its legitimate proportion. 

A careful examination of the statistics of 
twenty States shows the following average 
results-. 

First. That one sixth of all the crime in 
the country is committed by persons wholly 
illiterate. 

Second. That one third of the crime in the 
eountry is committed by persons wholly or 
substantially illiterate. 

Third. That the proportion of criminals 
among the illiterate class is, on the average, 
ten times as great as it is among those wluv 
have been instructed in the elements of -a 
common-school education or beyond. 

Fourth. That the expense imposed upon 
society to protect itself against a few thou- 
sand criminals, most of whom were made 
such through the neglect of society to take 
care of their education when young, is one 
of tlie heaviest of the public burdens. In tht 
city of New York it is fifty per cent, more than 
the whole cost of the public schools. 

In that city the annual appropriation for 
police, criminal courts, reformatories, jails, 
and penitentiaries is over five millions of 
dollars; while that for the training of the 
385,000 school children in the city is onlj 
$3,500,000. 



84 



CnBISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



The average attendance at the schools in 
1882 was 138,329. The " Compulsory School 
Age " — that is, the age within which all 
ciiildren are required by law in the State of 
Xew York to attend school — is eight to four- 
teen years. The number of children of this 
age in the city of New York, in June, 1880, 
was 144,474; while the average attendance 
on the public schools of children of all ages 
from five to twenty-one in that year in the 
cit}"" was only 133,096. As a logical conse- 
quence of this neglect of education, the city 
jails and almshouses are crammed, and taxes 
are iiigh. 

The city, in its meager provision for edu- 
cation and its enormous taxation for crim- 
inals, (to use an old but expressive adage,) 
" saves at tlie spigot but loses at the bung." 
What is true of the metropolis of the coun- 
try is equally true of every city, town, vil- 
lage, and neighborhood. 

These facts could be multiplied almost 
without limit. 

The examination of the statistics of crimi- 
nality and illiteracy in the census of any civ- 
ilized state or coimtry will give results sub- 
stantially in harmony with the above. 
Carlyle says that : 

"If the devil were passing through my 
country, and he applied to me for instruction 
on any truth or fact of this universe, I should 
wish to give it him. He is less a devil know- 
ing that three and three are six, than if he 
didn't know it; a light spark, though of the 
faintest, is in this fact; if he knew facts 
enough, continuous light would dawn on him ; 
he would (to his amazement) understand 
what this universe is, on what principles it 
conducts itself, and would cease to be a 
devil I " 

God created man in his own image. It is 
natural to suppose, then, that man prefers 
right to wrong; but he requires enlighten- 
ment to enable him to discern and choose the 
right. 

The very laws of human nature unequivo- 
cally declare that the most efficient means 
of eradicating crime from society is universal 
education. 

It is not claimed that crime will thus be 
utterly exterminated ; for some crimes, as 
forgery, embezzlement, conspiracy to defraud, 
and bank-burglary, require a certain amount 
of knowledge ; and temptation is often great- 
er than human nature can resist. These, 
however, are the exceptions to the general 
rule of humanity, the same as are cases of 
physical deformity, idiocy, and lunacy. Even 
these criminals could be reformed by leach- 
ing them that if they would devote the same 
labor and skill to honest industry that they 
do to cruninality, they would, beyond any 
doubt, have much greater financial success ; 
besides escaping the misery that is insepara- 
ble from wrong-doing and its attendant pri- 
vations and punishment. 



The rule as deduced from the facts is that 
crime is in the inverse ratio of the education of 
the people. 

Third. 

"What kind of education is the surest guar- 
anty of wealth and morality, and the best 
preventive of pauperism and crime? and 
where is it to be obtained ? 

Education is not a training of the intellect 
alone ; it deals also equally with the physical 
organs and the moral faculties. 

Mens Sana in corpore sano, " A sound, 
healthful, well-developed mind in a sound, 
strong, vigorous bodj^" 

Tiie true system of education develops 
each faculty of the human organism in well- 
balanced harmony from earliest infanc_y to 
the end of life. This development is ob- 
tained in the first instance, say from the 
fifth to the twentieth year, chiefly in school. 

There are in general two kinds of schools 
in enlightened countries: (1) The Parochial 
Schools. These came in with Christian 
Cliurches, and for centuries were almost the 
only schools which the common people could 
enter. (2) The Free Public Schools, provided 
and supported at public expense. 

The parochial schools, working in harmony 
with the Churches, wrought in time in Chris- 
tian countries a change in public sentiment 
on the question of education, and led the 
way to the establishment of the /?-ee public 
school. Under the influence of the free pub- 
lic school it has come to be held as a funda- 
mental principle of well-organized society 
that " It is the duty of the property within the 
State to provide elementary education for all 
children ivitldn the State, sufficient to fit them 
to perform intelligently and honestly the duties 
required of tliem as citizens.''^ 

The child, however poor, has upon the 
jjroperty holder a clear claim for an educa- 
tion at public expense, sufficient to make him 
a useful member of society. This claim is 
the logical outcome from the second com- 
mandment: "Love thy neighbor as thj'self." 

As these two kinds of schools began lo 
move on together, it naturally and properly 
resulted, in course of time, that the parochial 
school confined itself more and more to relig- 
ious instruction; to making a convert of the 
child to its particular shade of religious be- 
lief; and it gave less and less attention to 
imparting mere secular knowledge; while 
the free public school gave more and more 
attention to fitting the child to take care of 
himself in this world, and to perform his 
duty here as a member of the body politic. 
It left religious instruction to the parents, to 
the Sunday-schools, and lo the Churches, un- 
less the government maintained a State re- 
ligion ; then instruction in that was included 
in the curriculum of the public school. But 
in this country we have no State religion. 
Church and State, by the organic law, are 



ILLITERACY, WEALTH, PAUPERISM, AND GRIME. 



separate. Tlio Church — religion of all kinds 
— is within the State, but is simply protect- 
ed, not supported, by the State. 

The relative effect to-day of the parochial 
school and of the public school upon wealth 
and morality and pauperism and crime, is 
evident to the observer in traveling through 
two neighboring countries where the respect- 
ive systems have each for a long period been 
in exclusive control of education. 

The line of demarkation between the two 
systems is as plain as between cloud and 
sunshine. Switzerland, thirty years ago, was 
a good illustration. In the Cantons that de- 
pended on parochial schools, material and 
intellectual life was stagnant. The build- 
ings, except the churches, were dilapidated ; 
industry was rude ; the faces of the people 
were dull ; and the highways infested with 
beggars. Dickens describes them as charac- 
terized by " dirt, disease, ignorance, squalor, 
and misery." 

But the Cantons that supported free pub- 
lic schools were filled with a bright, act- 
ive, ingenious, intelligent, industrious, and in- 
dependent people ; or, as Dickens puts it, by a 
population noted for " neatness, cheerfulness, 
industry, education, continued aspiration." 

Italy was then another striking illustra- 
tion. The Papal and Neapolitan States had 
the parochial system alone ; while Tuscany 
had, to a certain extent, the free public school. 
A general dilapidation, dirt, vermin, crimi- 
nals, beggars, vagabonds, and monks pro- 
claimed the sway of the parochial school; 
wiiile neatness, order, and thrift announced 
flie presence of the free public schools. Ire- 
land and Spain, with parochial schools, 
swarmed with beggars and criminals. Ger- 
many, with her rigorous system of free pub- 
lic education, has become a hive of study, 
thought, and industry. 

In France, previous to 18*70, the religious 
orders, led by the Jesuits, controlled primary 
education, and half the population could not 
even read ; and manly virtue, as was demon- 
strated in the conflict with Germany, was 
wanting. 

So marked were these distinctive results 
of the two systems, tha* Switzerland, Italy, 
and France, in the interest of society, have 
now made elementary education free, secular, 
universal, and compulsory. 

The fruits of the two systems up to 1870 
existed side by side in our country. The 
census of that year shows a foreign-born 
population of five and a half millions; most 
of whom came from Ireland and England, 
countries up to that time dependent upon 
parochial schools, though England lias now 
adopted and put in operation the free public 
school with compulsory attendance. Hence, 
at that date, though not now, our foreign 
population may be justly taken, intellectually 
and morally, as the fair averagis product of 
that parochial mode of education. 



Of these five and a half millions, those 
above the age of ten who could not read or 
write were fourteen per cent, of the whole. 
The paupers were four and one tenth per 
cent., and the criminals one and one tenth 
per cent. 

While, on the other hand, it appears by 
the same census that in twenty-one of our 
States having the American system of non- 
sectarian free public schools, there was a 
native population of twenty millions. 

This native population had been educated 
in this system of schools, and in like manner 
may be justly taken, intellectually and mor- 
ally, as the fair average product of this meth- 
od of education. 

Of these, the illiterates, above the age of 
ten, were only three and one half per cent,, 
(■035) of the whole number; the paupers, 
only one and seven tenths per cent., ('017 ;) 
and the criminals, only three fourths of one 
per cent, ('OOTo.) In other words, from ev- 
ery ten thousand inhabitants the parochial 
school method on the average turned out 
fourteen hundred illiterates, four hundred 
and ten paupers, and one hundred and sixty 
criminals; whil^ the non-sectarian free pub- 
lic school method turned out from every tea 
thousand inhabitants only three hundred and 
fifty illiterates, one hundred and seventy pau- 
pers, and seventy-five criminals. 

Or, if we take Massachusetts by itself, 
whose system is the type or model of our 
free public schools, with its 1,104,032 native 
inhabitants, in 1870, the number is still less, 
namely, seventy-one illiterates, forty-nine 
pauper.s, and eleven criminals to the ten 
thousand. 

Tabulating the foregoing figures for com- 
parison, we obtain the following result : 

niiter- Pau- 
ates. pers. 

Parochial system 1,400 410 

Public-school system in 21 States. 350 ITO 
Public-school system in Mass 71 49 

Crim- Tnlinb- 

inals. itants. 

Parochial system 160 to 10,000 

Public school system in 21 States, 75 to 10,000 
Public-school system In Mass 11 to 10,000 

Society under the parochial school produces 
four times as many illiterates, two and a half 
times as many paupers, and more than twice 
as many criminals as under the average pub- 
lic school; or, if we take the Massachusetts 
type of public school, society under the paro- 
chial school produces twenty times as many 
illiterates, eight times as many paupers, and 
fourteen times as many criminals, as under 
the public school. 

We have also for five years and eight 
months, from 1871 to 187*5, inclusive, the 
data in the city of New York for this com- 
parison of the eifect on pauperism and crime 
of the two systems of education. 



so 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



The Department of Charities and Correc- 
tions during tliat period cared for 

Irish paupers 98,787 

German paupers 24,273 

American paupers 63,178 

Of all other nationalities. . . 17,563 

In addition to these there were each year 
several thousand of the Irish race assisted 
by the numerous charitable iustituiions of 
their Church, of which for that period we 
have no reliable data, though the city con- 
tributed from the public money half a million 
dollars a year to these Churcli institutions. 

The above table, reduced to a comparative 
ratio, based on the census of 1870, of each 
race, in that city — and taking tiie American 
as the unit of the ratio — gives the following 
result : 

American paupers 1*00 

Irish paupers 3 "50 

German paupers 1"33 

All others 1-50 

The Irish were, substantially, all educated 
In the parochial school ^ the Germans nearly 
all in the public schools; the other foreign 
nationalities partly iu the parochial and partly 
in the public schools. 

From this table it appears that a child ed- 
ucated in a parocliial school is so much more 
poorly fitted and furnished for supporting 
himself in the city of New York than he 
would be if trained up in the public schools, 
that he is three and a half times as likely to 
become a pauper as he would if he attended 
the free public schools in the city. 

During the same time, in that city the 
number of 

Irish arrested was 571,497 

Germans 11 9,659 

Americans 387,154 

All other nationalities. . . . S2,934 

while the names of those arrested show 
that a large percentage of the class denomi- 
nated Americans in the above table are of 
Irish parentage; and hence, to a large extent, 
were educated in the parochial schools. 

But taking the table just as it stands, and 
reducing the figures to a comparative ratio, 
based on the number of each race in the city, 
as fixed by the census of 1870 — and taking 
the American as the unit — gives the follow- 
ing: 

American criminals 1 -00 

Irish " 3-28 

German " 1-07 

All other races 1'27 

In other words, a child trained in the pa- 
rochial school is during life more than three 
and a quarter times as likely to get into jail 
as tlie child trained in the fiee public school. 

The above tables are ti:e result of so large 
a generalization, running through bo many 



years, that they are safe and sure indicaliona 
of the comparative outcome of the two sys- 
tems of education. 

Many of our philanthropists are so well 
satisfied that the most efficient instrumetit 
for tiie prevention of crime in society is the 
Church, that tliey give their whole heart and 
surplus money to the multiphcation and de- 
velopment of churches ; instead of increasing 
the appropriation for public schools, multiply- 
ing school-houses and academies, and their 
endowment, and securing the regular attend- 
ance of all school children. 

There is little danger in this country of 
too much attention being given to churches; 
the more we have of them tlie better; but 
one must not forget that the school deals willi 
the mind and lieart when young, plastic, and 
easily molded, while the Church is adapted 
more especially for adults, and has to do 
chiefly with those whose habits are to a cer- 
tain extent formed and crystallized ; hence it 
is reasonable to expect that the school will 
be a more effective preventive of crime thfiu 
the Church; besides, the penalties held up 
to the mind by the Church are, necessarily to 
a certain extent, so remote and avoidable as 
to lose much of their reformatory virtue. 

The relative efficiency of the Church and 
the school in preventing crime was investi- 
gated by tlie Kingdom of Bavaria in 1870. 
The chui-ches in that kingdom were almost 
exclusively Roman Catholic; hence the re- 
sults are strictly true only of that Church; 
but in principle they apply to all Churches. 
The difference on this point is merely one of 
degree. 

In Upper Bavaria there were 16 cliurcbes 
and 5^ school-houses to each 1,000 buildings, 
and 667 crimes to each 100,000 inhabitants. 
In Upper Franconia the ratio was 5 churches, 
7 school-houses, and 444 crimes. In Lower 
Bavaria the ratio was 10 cimrches, A^ school- 
houses, and 879 crimes. In the Palatinate 
the ratio was 4 churches, 11 school-houses, 
and only 425 crimes, or less than one half. 
In the Lower Palatinate the ratio was 11 
churches, 6 school-houses, and 690 crimes, 
while in Lower Franconia the ratio was 5 
churches, 10 school-houses, and only 384 
crimes. Tabulated for clearness of compari- 
son, it is as follows: 

Crimes 
Per 1,000 buildings, per 1,000 
Churches. School-houses, souls. 

TTpper Bavaria 15 5>^ 667 

Upper Franconia.. 5 7 444 

Lower Bavaria 10 4>^ 870 

The Palatinate.... 4 11 425 

Lower Palatinate. 11 6 691) 

Lower Franconia . 5 10 884 

In short, it seems that crime decreases al- 
most in the same ratio that the schools in- 
crease ; while more or less churches, at least 
of the class of those of Bavaria referred to in 
the above table, produce comparatively littlo 
effect upon it. 



ILLITERACY, WEALTH, PAUPERISM, AND CRIME. 



87 



The Church supplements the work of the 
pubUc school, and is a very necessary, impor- 
tant, and efficient supplement; but it cannot 
till the place of the pubhc school, even as a 
preventive of crime. The chief aim of the 
oue, as at present conducted, is to prepare 
us for \AvQfutwe life; that of the other, to fit 
us for the present life ; and crimes are of the 
present life. 

Those unerring guides to the statesman — 
siatistics — demonstrate that the most eco- 
nomical, effective, and powerful preventive 
of crime is the free common school, supple- 
ni'-nied by the academy, the college, and the 
Uhurclj. 

Universal education tends to universal mo- 
rali/y. 

The training of the public schools in this 
country, though a far surer preventive of 
pauperism and crime than that of the paro- 
chial schools and churches, is yet very far 
below what it ought to be, and may easily 
be made to be. The instruction deals too 
much with the abstract, and too little with 
the concrete; too much with words and 
names, and too little with ideas and things. 
The ciiild should be taught to memorize less 
and to think more. The elements of indus- 
trial education could be taught with great 
advantage, and should be taught, in our pub- 
lic schools, as they are and have been for 
years in the public schools of Germany. This 
would enable the children to do something 
as well as merely to know something, and 
would tend directly to prevent and reduce 
pauperism, by qualifying them on leaving 
school at once to begin earning a livelihood. 

Instruction and training in the universal 



laws of right and wrong and moral responsi- 
biliiy are now, ihrough fear of trenching on 
sectarian religion, too mucii neglected in tlie 
public school. These laws are common to all 
sects and churches; they are, so to speak, 
the foundation upon which not only all sects 
build, but upon which civilized society rests. 
If they were made more promiuent in the 
public-school curriculum it would not offend 
the religious denominations, and would add 
still more to the efSciencj' of these schools in 
preventing crime and tittiug tiie pupils for 
citizenship. 

Our country, with its free democratic re- 
publican government, based on universal suf- 
frage, should, as a matter of political safety 
alone, be sprinkled all over with free com- 
mon schools within easy reach of every 
child of the school age. Attendance upon 
these schools of every child between tiie ages 
of eiglit and fifteen years should be required 
by law, and enforced, unless the child is ob- 
taining an equivalent education elsewhere ; 
and the public-school authorities of each dis- 
trict, town, and county should be charged 
with the enforcement of this benehcenc law. 

These schools, like the stars in the heav- 
ens, will perpetually illuminate the whole 
Republic with rays of intelligence, industry, 
and morality. Tlieir benign influence should 
be aided, strengthened, and intensitied by the 
academy, the college, the university, and the 
Church. 

In this way pauperism and crime, and the 
burdens imposed by them upon socieiy, 
would be reduced to a minimum ; and order, 
prosperity, and wealth increased to a maxi- 
mum. 



2. RELATION OF EDUCATION TO MORAL CHARACTER. 

EEV. C. W. GUSHING, D.D., 
Pastor First Methodist Episcopal Church, Eochester, N. Y 



THE aim of education is to make useful — 
valuable to society. It contemplates, 
tlierefore, the development of all there is in 
a man. But to make the most of a man his bal- 
ance must be preserved, or if he lack this it 
must be secured. 

No one is efficient only as he is well poised. 
So that this question of poise underlies the 
whole question of education. And educa- 
tion, that education at which the State aiais, 
or should aim, is the development, the build- 
ing of the man; for only such education can 
make the best citizens. To educate one 
part of a man to the neglect of other parts 
is to destroy the poise. 

Intellectual development elevates a man 
on one side, makes him keener, and in that 



degree more influential. Physical develop- 
ment makes him more endui-ing, capable of 
greater exertion. But moral development 
only will make him correcter, purer, and 
hence more useful. 

To make a man who shall be keen and far- 
reaching in liis plans, there must be intel- 
lectual education ; to make him honest and 
upright in his purposes there must be moral 
education ; to make him able to push his 
plans to success there must be physical ed- 
ucation. These combined will ht a man for 
responsibility and successful work, and 
notiiing less will. This, therefore, is the ed- 
ucation at which the State should aim. 
Nothing short of tliis can compass the end 
ul' citizenship. 



88 



CnBISTlAIf EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



Now let us inquire what is the relation of 
sach education to moral character. What is 
character? Is it not the true representation 
of the inward man? Literally, character 
means to engrave. Then it is that which 
the thouglits, purposes, and plans of a man 
have engraved upon him — or better, that 
wliich they have hewn him into, for charac- 
ter is the man — not what men think he is, 
but what lie really is. This may be either 
better or worse than men tliinlc him to be — 
it is about as liable to be one as the other 
— but it is his character. The child is born 
without character. He may have proclivi- 
ties, strong biases ; but these are not charac- 
ter. Nothing which inheres in the child at 
the outset can, strictly speaking, be called 
character. It is only an endowment; while 
character is an outgrowth, a development; 
something to be cut out and built. Moral 
character is this same attainment in moral 
subjection — under the control of moral im- 
pulses and principles. 

It has been a question whether a purely 
intellectual education will make a man any 
better morally. 

Moreover, if we turn to history, we shall 
find that intellectual culture has been no 
guaranty of this. There was a time when 
Egypt was famous in letters — when science 
was pursued as nowhere else; when her 
great and justly renowned university drew 
to its halls many of the great men of the 
world, not excepting the great philosophers 
of Greece. But all this did not elevate her 
morally. The same will be found true of 
Athens, Rome, and other nations. What, 
then, is the source of morality ? It is some- 
times said, it is religious teaching. Tliis may 
or may not be true. It depends upon the 
character of the religious teaching. Egypt, 
Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Rome, 
abounded in priests and priestesses, and had 
religious teaching ad nauseam. The same is 
true in many Roman Catholic countries. But 
the very religion of Egypt and of other 
countries named was, of itself, demoralizing. 
How could it be otherwise when the priests 
and priestesses at tlie altars were debauchees 
and recreant to all the claims of virtue. And 
this recreance was a part of their religion, 
too. We find, also, that in many Roman 
Catholic countries much of the religinus 
teaching is such as tends to lessen the bonds 
of morality. Nay, more. Not' only in tiiose 
countries, but in our own as well, the laigest 
proportion of criminals is often found among 
the adherents of Rome. 

But all this aside, it is doubtless true that 
the highest t3'pe of morality is the fruit of 
religious teaching. But it is the religion of 
the New Tesfciment. 

Some of tlie prodigies of this age of wis- 
dom claim to have made tlie marvelous dis- 
covery that the Bible is an immoral book. 
How comes it, then, that no man or woman 



was ever yet made immoral by the honest 
study of it? How comes it that the most 
strictly moral persons have been those who 
have studied the Bible the most carefully 
and obeyed its teachings the most implicitlj'? 
These are facts which cannot be gainsaid. 

Perhaps the old Aryan race, the early in- 
habitants of the most ancient India, came as 
near the true standard as any pagan nation 
which has liad existence. Their system of 
philosophy and morals puts to blush many 
of the more pretentious systems of later 
days. And yet, under these, the race stead- 
ily degenerated in every thing essential to na- 
tional beauty and grandeur. Now, then, we 
come to ask. What is the aim of the State in 
her educational work? Is it not to make 
men? To make the most reliable, the most 
trustful and efScient citizens ? What, then, 
is the real character of such? Are they 
ever immoral ? True, immoral men have, in 
some instances, done valuable work for the 
State. But are they the men to be relied on 
for such work? Would not men with the 
same abilities, and with strong moral char- 
acters, be more trustworthy and more effi- 
cient even ? Is the government ever safe ex- 
cept in the hands of such? Suppose the 
bulk of the people under a government like 
ours should become immoral. What must 
be the character of the laws and of the gov- 
ernment itself? Does the stream ever rise 
higher than the fountain? Does a pure 
stream ever flow from an impure fountain ? 
No more can good and wholesome laws pro- 
ceed from an inmioral people. A correct 
sense of justice is indispensable to the crea- 
tion or proper admiiustration of law. 

And now, gi-anting what has been said, 
that the highest type of morality is the out- 
growth of Christian teaching, that a strong 
and symmetrical morahty has seldom, if ever, 
been produced except under the influence of 
Christian education, or something tantamount 
to it, and that wherever such a regime has 
been established and consistently worked, 
this has been the legiiimate and uniform 
fruit, it cannot long remain a question in re- 
gard to the duty of the State in this mat- 
ter. 

Let me not be misunderstood here. When 
I speak of the importance, and necessity 
even, of a Christian education, I do not mean 
the teaching of creed or catechism in any 
form or in any sense. I mean simply the 
implanting of the principles of integrity and 
virtue, which underlie all the teachings of 
Christ and his apostles, and may be said to 
grow out of them. Let me sa}^ with empha- 
sis that I do not mean what is meant by the 
Romish Church or -auj other when it makes 
a demand for the privilege of teaching its 
own creed and dogmas. Nay, but this is 
subversive of the aim to secure a Christian 
education; and I affirm without hesitation 
that the education given in the Roman Gaih- 



ILLITERACY, WEALTH, PAUPERISM. AND CRIME. 



89 



olio schools of this country is in no proper 
sense a Christian education. The children 
are taught the catecliism and the incredible 
fables of that Church, instead of the broad 
principles which underlie virtue and integ- 
rity. Tliis is not random talk. Facts go to 
show thnt the teaching does not secure the 
end which sliould be sought, viz. : morality 
in its subjects. For, while the entire con- 
stituency of this sect is more thoroughly in- 
doctriiiated than any other class — more uni- 
formly receives what the}"- call a Christian 
education — still, statistics show that a larger 
proportion of our criminals come from tliai 
class than from any other. This fact forces 
us to the logical conclusion that the teaching- 
is not Cliristian, but purely sectarian. 

I should deeply deplore as a great public 
calamity the establishment of public scliools 
which would teach the peculiar doctrines 
and usages of mj' own Churcli, much as I 
believe in these doctrines and usages. It 
would be a narrowing down of the great 
work to such a scale as could but be liarm- 
ful, and result in clogging the wheels of 
progress in the great work of educating the 
nation. The State can never safely recog- 
nize the establishment of schools by any 
sect for the work of public education. 

With this hedging, we are now prepared 
to say that it is the dutj"- of the State to pro- 
vide and insist upon a true Christian educa- 
tion for all of her cliildren. Chief-Justice 
Story, than whom higher authority need not 
be sought, saj^s : " It is impossible for those 
who believe in Christianity to doubt that it 
is the special duty of the government to fos- 
ter and cherish it among all its citizens and 
subjects." I know that this view alarms 
many, lest it should in some sense involve 
the idea of a union of Church and State. But 
what possible harm could come from such a 
union as this contemplates. The experiment 
has never yet been tried, unless it were in 
the Jewish republic. England, France, 
Italy, Spain, and many other countries have 
given us examples of the effect of the union 
of sect and State, but never an instance of 
Church, or of Christianity, and State. The 
Church is immeasuralaly broader than anj' 
sect, covering and embracing all sects. In 
no sense would we recognize or advocate 
any connection in the direction of secular or 
pecuniary interests ; but such a connection, 
and such only, as relates to the work of the 
State in protecting itself. We would liave 
the State make use of those agencies which 
are within its legitimate sphere, for the pur- 
pose of building up and protecting her own 
interests. If the government finds that 
stanch moral integrity is indispensable to 
lier prosperity and to her perpetuity, if she 
finds that such moral integrity is only se- 
cured, or even hest secured by a Christian 
education, there remains no room for doubt 
as to her duty. If she ignores or neglects 



this demand, she is recreant to her highest 
trust — for self-preservation is among the first 
duties. 

No one doubts that it is a leading duty of 
the government to prevent crime. But it 
would be axiomatic to say that, as a rule, 
crime will be in proportion to the lack of 
moral character. Tliere are instances, to be 
sure, where crime is greatly lessened by po- 
lice regulations. A man may have murder 
in his heart, but be prevented from commit- 
ting it in the place where he is, wliile, in an- 
other place, no such barrier would have been 
interposed. For instance, by statistics 
gathered in France and Prussia, in 1854, it 
was found that crime was fifteen limes as 
common in Prussia as in France. But, aside 
from tills, there was no evidence that tlio 
people of France were any more moral than 
the people of Prussia. It is also declared 
by many travelers that drunkenness is al- 
most unknown in Paris; and the inference, 
triumphantly announced, is, that the habit 
of wine-drinking, to which all Paris is given, 
is a sure preventive against drunkenness. 
How often we have heard this. But any 
careful investigator, who talks with police- 
men and examines the police records, will 
find that this is due largely to the admirable 
poUce regulations of Paris. Any man who 
shows the first symptoms of drunkenness is 
hurried away and shut up until fully recov- 
ered. And the number of such arrests is 
verj'- large. 

AH this does not invalidate the self- 
evident truth that crime will be measured 
by the moral character of a people. 

In the report of the Commissioner of 
Education for 1872-3, tiie late Dr. Edward 
D. Mansfield says : " One of the great facts 
revealed by statistics is that, in the same 
moral condition of society, the same propor- 
tion of crimes will be brought out." " This 
was proved by Quetclet in his statistics; 
was observed by Madame De Stael; and is 
made much of by Buckle in his 'History of 
Civilization.'" "If the moral condition of 
society changes, then this apparently uniform 
proportion will change also." 

The Commissioner of Statistics for the 
State of Ohio for 1861 says: "The great 
mass of crimes, however, keeps an exact 
proportion to the population, and, unless the 
morcd condition of society is clmnged, will con- 
tinue to do so." " So long as society presents 
the same moral conditions, so long it will 
present the same proportion of crime; but 
society has the moral power of self-reform. 
Shall it be said that society refuses to exer- 
cise this power ? " 

It may be said that a large proportion of 
criminals are destitute of education alto- 
gether. But statistics do not quite agree in 
regard to this Statistics gathered in France, 
between 1866 and 1869, show that, out of tiie 
one half of the population who could neither 



90 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



read nor write, the arrests were one in forty- 
one, wliile from the one half commonly 
educated the arrests were only one in nine- 
ty-two hundred and ninety-one. Showing 
that the crimiuals from the uneducated 
classes were two hundred and twenty-six 
times as many proportionally as from the 
educated classes. This is an extraordinary 
showing and really exceptional. 

A summary of statistics gathered from 
different countries shows that one third of 
all criminals are totallj' uneducated, and 
that four fifths have but slight education. 
. We may now consider the final question, the 
question of greatest importance in its bear- 
ings upon this whole subject : What is the 
real source of that moral character without 
which men are unfitted for the duties of 
citizenship? How is it to be secured ? The 
advocates for a secular education virtually 
admit the importance of this moral charac- 
ter by the very tenacity with which they 
insist that a secular education will secure it. 

It wotild be folly to parade argument for 
the purpose of showing tluit, in a country 
where every man has equal voice in making 
law, and where the laws must be what the 
majority declare they shall be, whatever 
the character of that majority, moral char- 
acter is indispensable. It would be equal 
folly to attempt to show that, in proportion 
as a people became corrupt, in that propor- 
tion they sink. The history of the past is 
eloquent with the concentrated testimony of 
nations upon this point. Then, if the state 
will live, she must guard well the moral 
character of her citizens and subjects. To 
do this most effectually she must aim, in all 
her work, but specially in her educational 
work, at the creation of moral character. 
In this work it should never be forgotten 
that " Whatsoever a man sowetli, that shall 
he also reap." It has already appeared that 
such mora! character as we are in searcli 
of is never found in its perfection only 
where the Bible and its doctrines hold sway. 
Hon. Josiah Quincy said : " There can be no 
freedom without morality, no morality with- 
out religion, and no religion without the 
Bible." 

We claim to be seeking the highest type of 
civilization, and the laws which will be most 



effectual in securing it. Edward Everett says : 
" Grotius was the founder of the science of 
international law, and that he laid the 
foundation of his treatise in the Scriptures 
of the Old and New Testament." The 
learned Fisher Ames says: "No man need 
liope to be a sound lawyer unless well read 
in tlie law of Moses." Everett says again : 
"The Bible is the foundation of the most 
characteristic portion of our modern Euro- 
pean and American civilization." 

Why, then, I awk. in the name of the rights 
of our civilization and the rights of our 
children, why this clamor aojainst the Bible 
in our public schools? Is it said there are 
some who do not accept its teaching? It 
maj'- be said with equal pertinency that 
there are those who do not believe in the 
political economy and the Constitution of the 
United States. Will the state, therefore, 
exclude our pohiical economy and Constitu- 
tion from the schools ? 

It is said, again, there are religious sects 
which do not desire to have it there. Do 
they oVjject on the ground of its moral 
teaching? Do they offer any thing as a 
substitute whose record and teaching is 
better? Would tliey object to liaving their 
own catechism taught? I suspect these ob- 
jections are merely specious. Are not these 
sects planted upon this Bible? If not, let it 
be known. Are they afraid of its influence? 
Would they put the traditions and incredible 
fables of the "Fathers" before it? Are 
they afraid of its interpretation except by 
liooded monks ? If so, let it be acknowl- 
edged openlj''. It is time this issue was 
squarely met. The Bible is not a sectarian 
book, and ii is possible this is just what is 
the matter. At any rate it is out of the 
scliools in many places, and that in the 
interest of sectarianism. It ought to be in 
the schools in the interest of morality and 
the rights of the state. Let the whole aim 
of our educational work be to make broad, 
intelligent, and independent citizens, with a 
moral character which shall make them 
thoroughly reliable. Then may we continue 
to boast of our public schools as the hope of 
the nation. Then, too, will our nation main- 
tain her true position as the vanguard in the 
onward march of nations. 



VI. THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



GEISr. T. J. MOEGAX, 

Principal State Noi-mal School, Potsdam, N. T. 



As presiding officer of the morning session, Gen. Moegan spoke ag 
follows : 



IT is not my purpose tliis morning to make 
any speech myself, but simply to preside 
over the deliberations of those who are called 
upon to make addresses. But I want to con- 
gratulate those of you who are here to-day 
on the privilege of taking part in these meet- 
ings. It is often said that the aspiring and 
ambitious young American thinks that tlie 
great thing for him to accomplish is to go to 
Congress. You cannot all go to Congress, 
but here we have really the Congress of the 
American people, where American citizens 
come together to discuss great American 
problems, and it is from meetings like this 



that go forth the instructions that shape the 
deliberations of Congress, and give tliem di- 
rection. 

The solution of the questions, "What shall 
be done with the Negro? what shall be 
done with the Indian? what shall be done 
with the Mormon ? and other great prob- 
lems, must come from the American citizen 
— from the American Christian public; aud, 
I say, I congratulate you on your privilege 
in taking part in tliis meeting, and, by your 
presence aud your counsel and your aid, help- 
ing to shape the thought and legislation and 
destiny of this Republic. 



2. AN IMPORTANT LETTER. 



HON. H, M, TELLER, 

Secretary of the Interior, Washington. 



Department of the Inteeiob, 

Washington, July 14, 1883. 
J. C. Hartzell, D.D., Ocean Grove, N. J. 

Bear Sir : I regret that I am not able to 
accept your kind invitation to attend the 
meeting of the " National Education Assem- 
bly " to be held at Ocean Grove, in August. 
You especially invite my attention to what 
you designate as " Our Indian Day." By 
this I infer you have devoted one day to the 
consideration of the " Indian Question," and 
you will, doubtless, consider the subject of 
Indian education, as well as that of making 
them citizens, securing for them homes, etc. 

I think it may be assumed that it has been 
fully demonstrated that the Indian can be 
educated. I do not think this can be seri- 



ously questioned by any one who has given 
this subject the attention that its importance 
demands. "With the education of the Indian, 
in a great degree, our responsibility with 
reference to him is at an end. An educated 
Indian is a civiUzed man, and as capable of 
taking care of himself as the great majority 
of the civilized people of the world. I do 
not intend by the term education to be con- 
fined to mere book knowledge. That educa- 
tion is the best for man that enables him to 
take the best care of himself, and to provide 
the most hberally for his mental, moral, and 
physical wants. The Indian has much to 
learn: he must be taught many things his 
civilized neighbor acquires in his infancy by 
his associations, if he does not inherit them 
from his civilized and enlightened parents. If 



93 



CHEI8TIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



the Indian mind is largely a blank, it readily 
takes tlie impressions sought to be stamped 
on ic, whether the lessons are intellectual or 
phj'sical. His moral perceptions are not as 
sensitive as his mental. Tlie number of suc- 
cessful Indian schools now under the control 
of the Interior Department, the almost uni- 
versal demand that comes up from Indians 
all over the country for such school facilities, 
is most encouraging to the friends of Indian 
education, to those who see tlirough the 
means of manual labor schools the solution 
of the Indian problem that has so vexed the 
philanthropic during the last two hundred 
years. If a sufficient number of manual la- 
bor schools can be established to give to each 
youth the advantages of from three to five 
years of schooling, the next generation will 
liear nothing of this difficult problem, and 
we may leave the Indian to care for himself 
as his while neighbors do. During the last 
year, schools have been established at Law- 
rence, Kansas; Genoa, Nebraska; and Chi- 
locco, Indian Territory ; all to be conducted 
on the same plan as those of Carlisle, Hamp- 
ton, and Forest Grove. It is expected that 
these schools will provide for the education 
of about six or seven hundred children. 
About four hundred and fifty will be placed 
in manual labor schools in various States, to 
become the associates of white children of 
their own age. There will be in all the 
manual labor schools about 2,464 children, 
and at the agency schools about 1,820, and 
at boarding schools about 1,971, making a 
total in school of 6,255 out of a school popu- 
lation of nearly forty thousand. The agency 
schools are not regularly attended, and the 
children derive but little benefit therefrom. 
The number of children that may be put in 
manual labor schools is limited only by the 
provision made for their support. If Congress 
will increase the appropriation for that pur- 
pose the department will find no difficulty in 
securing the attendance of the children. 
But with the present appropriation it is im- 
possible to materially increase the number of 
children in schools. I desire to call your 
attention to a portion of my report for the 
fiscal year 1882: 

"With liberal appropriations it is quite 
possible to provide for the education of ten 
thousand Indian youths in manual labor 
schools during the fiscal year 1884, and at 
least twice that number during the fiscal 
year 1885. 

"The care, support, and education of 
10,000 Indian youths during the fiscal year 
1884 ought not to exceed $2,500,000, 'and 
with the increased number of children there 
ought to be a reduction in the cost, and tlie 
expense of 20,000 children ought not to ex- 
ceed $4,000,000 per annum. To the 20,000 
costing annually $4,000,000 ought each year 
10 be added not less than one fourth that 
number, which, at the same expense per 



capita, will necessitate an additional appro- 
priation of $1,000,000, and the account will 
stand thus : 

10,000 children, fiscal year 1884, 

computing the cost at $250 

each $2,500,000 

20,000 children, fiscal year 1885, 

at $200 each 4,000,000 

25,000 children, fiscal year 1886, 

at $200 each 5,000,000 

30,000 children, fiscal year 1887, 

at $200 each 6,000,000 

25,000 children, fiscal year 1888, 

at $200 each 5,000,000 

" The per capita allowance is greater than 
the cost at the agency boarding schools, but 
these schools are not kept up more than nine 
or ten months, while this estimate is for at- 
tendance for the full calendar year. 

"At the close of the fiscal year 1887, 
10,00o children, having completed their 
school course, can be discharged, leaving, 
with the 5,000 to be added for the fiscal 
year 1888, 25,000. Ten thousand of these 
may be discharged at the end of the fiscal 
year 1888, leaving, with the addition of 5,000, 
20,000 for the fiscal year 1889: and every 
year thereafter one fourth of the whole num- 
ber may be discharged, and tlie like number 
added. Thus, at the end of the fiscal year 
1888, there will have been discharged 20,000 
children, who will be able to care for and 
support themselves; and the total expense 
of the education of this number, with those 
remaining in school, will not exceed $22,- 
500,000, or about two thirds of the amount 
of money expended for the suppression of 
Indian hostilities during the years 1864 and 
1865. 

"Since 1872, a period of only ten years, 
the cost of Indian hostilities and military 
protection against the Indian is estimated by 
the military authorities at $223,891,264 50, 
or an annual expense of $22,389,126 45. 
To this must be added the yearly appropria- 
tion for subsistence, which averages about 
five millions a year. To this must also be 
added the loss of life and the horrors of an 
Indian war, only to be understood by those 
who have had the misfortune to be partici- 
pants in or witnesses of them. This cannot 
be computed in dollars, but ought to be con- 
sidered in determining the policy of the 
government in its dealing with the Indians. 

"It is useless to attempt the civilization 
of the Indian through the agency of schools 
unless a large number of children, certainly 
not less than one half the total number, can 
have the benefit of such schools, and even 
then it is not wise to depend wholly on that 
agency. The children on returning to their 
homes should have some encouragement and 
support." 

To meet this demand, not made without 
careful consideration, Congress appropriated 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



93 



about seven hundred thousand dollars. It is 
apparent, then, that the last Congress did not 
intend to accept the suggestions in the report 
just cited, and that unless the friends of In- 
dian education make a determined effort, the 
government will go on in the future as in 
the past, partially educating a small number 
of children, to be returned to their parents 
to be surrounded b}' ignorance and vice, 
against which they will be unable to stand, 
and they will soon return to their original 
Btate of savagery. If we put five per cent, 
of the Indian youths in school, and return 
them at the end of three or four years to the 
tribe, they will be unable to withstand the 
evil influences that surround them, and they 
will make no impression on their heathenish 
associates. But if, on the other hand, the 
government will educate thirty or forty per 
cent, of tlie children, the minority with their 
superior knowledge, having enough associates 
to form their own societ}', will conquer and 
subdue the greater number of ignorant youths. 
The lime has come when this work can be 
well and cheaply done. The Indian is ready 
and willing to receive ci^jilization at our 
hands, in the only way he ever will, that is, 
through labor and education. He cannot 
and ought not to be supported as a pauper. 
He must accept civilization and become 
a producer among men, or disappear as a race. 
Should the government withdraw its pro- 
tection and aid from the Indian he would 



soon disappear. This protection and aid 
costs many millions of dollars each year, and 
if we continue in the way we have for many 
years pasi; the civilization of the Indian is 
in the very distant future. Economy as well 
as humanity require that an effort should 
be made by all good citizens to secure a lib- 
eral appropriation for their education. 

May I hope to secure the active co-opera- 
tion of the '"National Education Assembly" 
in thia great work? I do not believe the 
Assemblj'- can engage in a work that will be 
of more lasting benefit to the human race 
than this. I would not, however, have you 
think I am so much interested in the cause 
of Indian education, which has been specially 
intrusted to my care, that I have lost sight 
of the necessity for greater facilities for the 
education of other tlian Indian children. I 
can but repeat in substance what I have said 
before \n the Senate, as well as in my annual 
report, that " the nation has duties to perform 
in this regard as well as powers to exer- 
cise; " and I trust the day is not far distant 
when the national government will extend 
to the States unable or unwilling to provide 
suitable school facilities such generous aid 
as shall encourage and strengthen the State 
governments to greater exertion in the cause 
of general education. In all your efforts in 
this direction you have my hearty sympathy 
and support. Very respectfully, 

H. M. Teller. 



3. THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE INDIAN. 



HENRY S. PANCOAST, ESQ., OF PHILADELPHIA. 



NO less an authority than Sir Henry Sum- 
ner Maine has declared that progress is 
not a general characteristic, a normal con- 
dition, of the human race. It is in the nature 
of man, he says, to stand still. The races 
that advance are the exception, and not the 
rule. However this may be, it is certainly a 
curious fact, that the progress of humanity 
seems to have depended on the progress of 
one great branch of the human family — the 
Aryan branch. From the mysterious rise of 
this Aryan people in the dim beginning of 
history until now, it has been the moving 
factor in the development of mankind. 
From its rise until now it has had a mission 
to civilize, to startle tiie lethargy and stag- 
nation of the other races, to bring progress 
and life, though they came by the sword and 
by destruction. From its starting-point, 
north-west of the Caucasian mountains, the 
Aryan people pushed to the south-east across 
the Indies, and, spreading over India, 



founded one of the most splendid and ven- 
erable of the civilizations of the world ; and, 
on the other hand, sweeping to the north- 
west, it laid in the mighty forests and un- 
tilled spaces of a remote wilderness the 
foundatiou of the Europe of to-day. 

Nor is its mission ended. Humanly 
speaking, the future of the race upon earth 
demands that the Aryan civilization shall go 
on. But how? In its progress this highest 
development ever reached by man is brought 
face to face with the most primitive races 
of mankind. The Aryan civilization must 
do one of two things ; it must exterminate or 
it must civilize. Advance it must, but in 
that advance it must come either to destroy 
or to fulfill. Now, the peculiar difficulty it 
finds to-day in being true to its mission to 
civilize, lies in the vast intellectual and 
moral difference between it and the other 
races. This enormous difference in the scale 
renders as.similation more difficult than it 



94 



CHRISTIAN ED UCA TORS IN CO UN GIL. 



was ia the rudor times, when men were 
more nearly on a level ; while a purer 
standard does not permit the use of the more 
violent methods of subjugation or forcible 
extermination. No longer do we seeli to 
propagate Christianity by sword and rack ; 
the conquest must be not merely the con- 
quest of force, but of mind. This assimila- 
tion can be effected only by an enormous 
and almost instantaneous stride on the part 
of the lower races. It is expected that the 
lower race will either suffer itself to be im- 
mediately translated to that higher life 
which liie higher race has been able to at- 
tain only through centuries of struggle, or 
will give place to a progress in which it can 
have no part. While we may hope that, 
eventually, time will soften or obliterate 
many ethnological distinctions which we 
have been accustomed to consider funda- 
mental, the primary effect of thus bringing 
together elements so incongruous is to give 
rise to many curious questions of great diffi- 
culty. In our own country, we have before 
us not only the task of assimilating large 
and incessant additions to our population 
from many sources, but the problem of deal- 
ing with three races difEering widely from 
each other and from the rest of our people, 
and apparently destined to be a permanent 
element in our population — the Negroes, the 
Chinese, and the Indians. In our relations 
with each of these three races the question 
presented is individual and distinct, yet in 
each case the end to be attained is the 
same. When a foreign race is an organic 
pa It of a nation, it must be compelled to 
surrender or abandon those race peculiarities 
which materially conflict with or retard the 
progress of the community ; just as, by the 
doctrine of political economists, the indi- 
vidual is bound to yield so much of his 
natural liberty as is necessary for the preser- 
vation and good government of society. 
The nation, on the other hand, is bound to 
give to the foreign race the political and 
legal protection it grants to the rest of the 
community. It is for the nation to consider 
how it can best compel or effect a surrender 
of such race peculiarities as it may deem 
hurtful, and safely and wisely extend to a 
distinct people its system of law, and invest 
them with the political privileges of its 
citizens. 

The necessity of thus politically incorpo- 
rating the Indian tribes is becoming more 
and more painfully apparent. It is seen 
that to continue much longer their curious 
and unjust legal status is impolitic and well- 
nigh impossible; yet the difficulties in the 
way of bringing under our laws and invest- 
ing with our rights a race so radically 
diverse seem almost insuperable. 

There are, I suppose, comparatively few 
who believe that any such amalgamation 
can be effected simply by the easy path of 



legislative enactment. An act of Congress 
is not an incantation or a charm that will 
change a savage into a citizen by declaring 
him one. What is needed is an organic 
change in the nature of the man himself, 
and it is worse than idle to thrust on him 
responsibilities he is incapable of appre- 
ciating, rights he is incapable of exercising 
intelligently, or to subject him to laws he is 
utterly unable to comprehend. 

Yet we should not overlook the fact that 
a cautious and gradual change in his legal 
status may be one of the most important 
agencies in effeciing this radical, organic 
change; that proper legal changes should 
work side by side with the more direct in- 
fluences of religion and education toward 
one and the same end. 

Let us examine the legal position of the 
Indians as tribes and as individuals, that we 
may consider what changes should be made 
in that position. 

What is their relation, as tribes, to the 
general government? What rights hav'e 
they, if any, as separate, organized bodies of 
men? 

By what tenure do they, as tribes or as 
individuals, hold their land? Can they be- 
come citizens? What standing have they, 
collectively or individually, in our courts? 
Such are some of the questions which natu- 
rally suggest themselves. Let us glance, 
first, at the legal position of the Indians, as 
tribes or nations, and examine first the tribal 
tenure of land. 

To understand this we must look at the 
early colonization of the country. 

Although America, at its discovery, was 
an inhabited country, almost the first act in 
the history of European occupation showed 
an utter disregard of those inhabitants. 
Pope Alexander II. solemnly divided the 
whole of the unknown world between Spain 
and Portugal. The validity of this grant 
being naturally questioned by the Protestant 
nations, it soon became evident that diffi- 
culties were likely to ensue between the 
different European powers almost simultane- 
ously touching tlie shores of the great con- 
tinent at many points. " To avoid bloody 
conflicts, which might terminate disadvan- 
tageously to all, it was necessary for the 
nations of Europe to estabhsh some principle 
which all would acknowledge, and which 
should decide their respective rights as be- 
tween themselves. This principle, suggested 
by the actual state of things, was : ' That 
discovery gave title to t!ie government by 
wliose subject or by whose authority it was 
made, against all other European govern- 
ments, which title might be consummated by 
possession.' " ' 

But, although it was declared by our 
Supreme Court that the European nations 



' "Worcester v. the State of Georgia, 6 Pet., 543-544, 
(8 Wheat. 5T3.) 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



95 



did acquire an nbsolute title by discovery, a 
title wtiich, after the Revolution, vested in 
tiie United States, yet the court held that 
this uUiinate title was subject to a right in 
the Indian tribes to possess or occupy the 
1 ind. It was thought that wild, nomadic 
bands could acquire no permanent interest 
in or right to the soil ; it was theirs but 
while they used it. While they chose to 
remain on it, it; could not lawfully be taken 
from them; but when tiiey left it their right 
was gone. The tribes have, our Supreme 
Court has declared, no higlier title than this 
riglit of occupaucj'-, and they can sell or sur- 
render that onl}^ to the holder of the abso- 
lute ultimate title, i. e., to the United States. 
But the court, at tlie same time, declared 
this riglit of occupancy a sacred right, a title 
which could not lawfully be taken from a 
trioe without its consent. 

The polilical relations between the tribes 
and OT.ir government were settled in the early 
days of the Republic, in the well-known 
case of tiie Cherokee Nation v. the State of 
Georgia. Without stopping to inquire into 
the facts of the case, it is sutficient for our 
purpose to state the point on which the 
decision turned: "Had an Indian tribe, 
recognized by the United States as a nation, 
in repeated treaties, a right to sue ia the 
national Supreme Court?" It was con- 
tended by the counsel for the Clierokees 
that they came within the constitutional 
provision giving to foreign nations a right to 
sue in our Supreme Court. The Cherokees 
were, it was urged, not citizens, but foreign- 
ers; they possessed the organized govern- 
ment and right to regulate their internal 
affairs characteristic of nationality; ihey 
had, moreover, been recognized by our 
government as a nation in treaty after treaty. 
A nation composed of foreigners must of 
necessity be a foreign nation. The decision 
of the court rested on the ground of juris- 
diction. It was .admitied that the Cherokees 
were a foreign nation, recognized as such by 
the United States in the several treaties, but 
denied tliat they were within the constitu- 
tional clause giving to foreign nations a 
right to sue. An examination of the Con- 
stitution showed, it was asserted, that it was 
not its intention to include the Indian tribes 
in that class. The Cherokees had, there- 
fore, no standing in court. 

It would be both presumptuous and use- 
less to criticise the decision in this case; but 
whatever may have been the legal correct- 
ness of the position taken by the court, the 
anomalous standing in which it left the In- 
dian tribes is, to say the least, unfortunate 
and inconsistent. 

The Executive had, by treaties with many 
of the tribes, placed them in the position of 
foreign nations; they were, by its deliberate 
act and will, included in the very class for 
whose protection the clause in the Constitu- 



tion was framed. The Executive, one branch 
of the supreme power, solemnly gave them 
an "unquestionable right;" the Judiciary, 
another branch of the same supreme power, 
as solemnly denies them a remedy. They 
were foreign nations, inasmuch as they 
could make treaties with us on equal terms, 
but they had not the right of foreign nations 
to legally enforce them. They were natioi.s 
when we wished them to grant v^ land, but 
not nations that could call on us to protect 
them in the possession of the land we had 
left them forever. Surely, wherever the 
fault lay, there was a fault somewhere. 

But, right or wrong, the tribal position of 
the Indian was determined. Hencefortli 
there was among us a class of men, recog- 
nized as nations, to whom, as a class and as 
nations, we denied the equal protection of 
the law ; nations in which we magnani- 
mously recognized rights which we refused 
to enforce; nations with whom we were free 
to make treaties since we were also free to 
break them ; nations to whom we could at 
our pleasure give land forever one year and 
take it back again the next; nations for 
whom there was but one law, the law that 
the strong may oppress the weak; nations 
to whom in their despair we left but one 
remedy, the remedy of war. 

In 1825 the plan of removing the tribes 
beyond the Mississippi, to what was then the 
remote West, was inaugurated by President 
Monroe, with the assistance of liis Secretary 
of War, Mr. Callioun. It was hoped that in 
the yet untenanted depths of the vast con- 
tinent these hunted and scattered bands 
might find a breathing-place ; a brief time to 
learn from our teaching those arts of civili- 
zation which alone could prevent their utter 
ruin. The policy of the government was 
then, as now, the policy of isolation ; a policy 
which has been one of the most effectual 
checks on the advancement of the Indian. 
This deliberate excluding of the race from 
the refining influence of contact with civili- 
zation has been largely rendered necessary 
by the simple fact that there is no proper 
law to protect the Indian in his relations 
with the whites. While the Indian is at a 
legal disadvantage, while he has no personal 
standing in the court to enforce his rights, 
he must be penned up in reservations from a 
contact which would make him the lawful 
prey of the community. 

But even this policy of quiet seclusion 
has not been carried out. It is not neces- 
sary to more than allude to the fact that the 
various tribes have been given no oppor- 
tunity to settle on the land and learn agri- 
culture and the arts of peace. The course 
of the government has been a weak yielding 
to the local pressure for Indian lauds, a 
shiftless, liaud-to-mouth waj'' of providing 
for the present at the expense of the future, 
with an utter indifference to the Indians' 



96 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



legal right of occupancy and the rights 
solemnl}' given by treaty. 

TJiis long line of broken treaties, this end- 
less making and breaking of promises, this 
complaisant ignoring of justice and even of 
common honesty, is but the natural conse- 
quence of a decision which denied a feeble 
and broken race the protection of the law. 

(gradually tlie legal position of the tribes 
became what it is to-day. From the honor- 
able position of nations, self-supporting, self- 
governing, and capable of treating with the 
United States on equal terms, the tribes 
have sunk to a position of Inuuiliatiug de- 
pendence. Praciically they have lost the 
right, theoretically theirs, of regulating their 
own internal affairs. As the agent has 
usurped greater and greater authoritj'' the 
power of tlie chiefs has decreased, until we 
have before us to-daj'' ttie isolation, the hope- 
lessness, and the de-ipotism of the " Ruser- 
vation System." We see to-day the great 
walls of civilization — or what we are pleased 
to term civilization — pressing closer and 
closer, like the four blank walls that slowly 
closed upon the wretched prisoner, with a 
mechanical, stifling, crushing pressure, as 
cold, as pitiless, and as inexorable. 

In 1871, atter the tribes had been recog- 
nized as nations by the United States in 
nearly four hundi-ed treaties, they were 
summarily deprived of their nationality by 
an act of Congress, whicli took away their 
rights of making ti'eaties with our govern- 
ment " as separate nations, tribes, or 
powers." 2 

"This act," says one writer, "destroys the 
nationality, and leaves the agent in the 
anomalous position of finding no authority 
within the tribe to which he can address 
himself, yet having in himself no legal 
antliority over the tribe or over the members 
of it." 3 

It is not easy to determine the precise 
legal position of the tribes since the passage 
of this act. The United States has con- 
tinued to make agreements, contracts, or 
whatever we may call them, with the tribes. 
It still considers them as organized bodies of 
men, as corporations, capable of contracting 
through their recognized officers, the chiefs 
or head men. Yet these organized tribes 
have been deprived of all but a miserable 
remnant of their right of self-government. 

They have been deprived of it, so far as I 
am aware, by no authorized means, by no 
act of Congress, or by no judicial decision, 
simply by the gradual and constant as- 
siuuption of power by the Indian Agent. 
The power of the chiefs has become a 
sliadow, and the agent, from the position of 
an embassador at the court of a foreign 
nation, has drawn to himself the absolute 



2 Rev. Statutes U. S., p. 366, sec. 2079. 

3 ludian Citizenship, luternatioual Kev., May-June, 
1874. 



authority of an Eastern despot. Now, the 
point I wish to call your attention to in this 
connection is this: This irregular assmnption 
of power is not the fault of the agent, it is a 
necessity, a necessity for arbitrary piiwer 
arising from the absence of law. Power 
there must be, of some kind. So long as wo 
neglect to protect and control these Indians 
in their individual relations, by the moderate, 
restrained, and consistent power of the Lmi\ 
just so long will the necessity exist for tlie 
exercise of a despotic and irresponsive 
power by the agents. The agents them- 
selves are in many cases the first to 
acknowledge the necessity for law. The 
fault is in the system. We have deprived 
the tribes of the internal dependence of 
" domestic dependent nations," j^et we 
neglect to give them the benefit of our la^. 

Such, then, is the legal position of the 
Indians as tribes. 

By a legal decision they have been denied 
the rights of foreign nations to sue in our 
Supreme Court. 

By statute their nationality has been de- 
stroyed, by depriving them of their right to 
treat with us as nations. * 

By the circumstances and necessities of 
the case their very right of self-government 
has been supplanted by the rule of an agent 
with great and indefinite powers. 

What are the main points in the position 
of the Indian as an individual? 

While the members of the Indian tribes 
are more absolutely under the control of our 
government than any other part of our popu- 
lation, not only are they not citizens, but 
they are not within our naturalization laws. 
An ludian can acquire no title to land, ex- 
cept in some tribes under the provisions of 
particular treaties. It is true that, under 
one statute, if an Indian separate himself 
from his tribe, renounce his tiibal relations, 
he can take a claim among the whites. Tlie 
natural shi'inking on the part of the ludian to 
go out from among his people,and settle among 
a race of widely different habits and speak- 
ing an unknown tongue, a race that he has 
good cause to regard with fear and aversion, 
makes this statute of no practical importance. 
But, besides this statute, if lie leave his tribe 
and merges in the community, he becomes 
entitled to the personal and judicial rights of 
an alien; and his children, bemg born out of 
the tribal allegiance, are citizens by birth, 
under the fourteenth amendment.^ 

It is difficult to define the cases in which 
our Federal courts possess jurisdiction over 
the reservation Indians, especially as that 
jurisdiction is subject to local modification 
under particular treaties. The jurisdiction 
of the courts over the Indians may be given 
in two ways. It may arise under the power 
of the United States over the person — that 



4 Opinion Atty.-Gen., 746. 

6 Exp. Reynolds 18 Alb. Law, J. 8. 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



97 



is, over the Indian apart from the place he 
may be in — or from the power of the United 
States over the place; that is, because the 
courts can punish ofEeuses committed within 
the exclusive jurisdiction of the United 
States. 

First, as to the power of the United States 
over the person. 

This arises under the clause in the Con- 
stitution by which the United States is 
"given power to regulate commerce with 
the Indian tribes." ® 

Under this cUmse numerous acts regulat- 
ing commerce, Itnown as " Intercourse Acts " 
have been passed. 

" This power," it has been judicially said, 
" includes not only traffic in commodities, 
but intercourse with such tribes, the per- 
sonal conduct of the whites and other races 
to and with such tribes and the members 
thereof, and vice versa. This intercourse is 
a subject of Federal jurisdiction, the same 
as the naturalization of aliens, the subject 
of bankruptcy, or the establishment of post- 
offices." 

But besides this power of the United 
States over the person of the Indian, there is 
the power of place, because the Indians are 
on land over which the United States has 
exclusive jurisdiction, an Indian reservation 
being on the same footing in this particular as 
United States fores, arsenals, dock-j'-ards, etc. 

This power of locality is under the general 
power of the United States over the Terri- 
tories and the following sections of the Act 
of 1834: 

" Except as to crimes, the punishment of 
which is expressly provided for in this sec- 
tion, tlie general laws of the United States 
as to the punishment of crimes committed 
in any place within the sole and exclusive 
jurisdiction of the United States, except the 
District of Columbia, shall extend to the In- 
dian country." 

"The preceding section shall not be con- 
strued to extend to crimes committed by one 
Indian against the person and property of 
another, nor to any Indian committing any 
offense in the Indian country who has been 
punished by the local law of the tribe, or to 
any case where, by treaty stipulations, ex- 
clusive jurisdiction over such offenses is or 
may be secured to the Indian tribes respect- 
ively." 

It will be seen that, so far as the Indians 
themselves are concerned, neither the local- 
ity of the offense nor the power over the 
person, gives the Federal courts any juris- 
diction. In all internal questions the Indians 
are left by the law absolutely to themselves; 
it is but in their relations with the rest of 
the population, where our intercourse with 
them is in question, that the Federal courts 
are able to relieve and punish. 



Thus, according to some local decisions, 
the Federal courts have jurisdiction when a 
wliite man steals from an Indian, and vice 
versa,'' or in the murder on the reservation 
of an Indian by a wliite man,^ and this 
whether the reservation be on a Territory or 
within the limits of a State.' 

And as the power of the United States is 
not merely of locality, but of subject, it ex- 
tends to offenses committed by Indians off 
the reservation, over which the Federal 
courts would have jurisdiction had they been 
committed upon it.^^ 

Yet, in sa3ang this we have probably 
given too liberal an idea of the power of our 
courts. It must not be forgotten that in 
these cases, while the Indian may be brought 
into court as a defendant, as a plaintiff he 
has in his own person no standing. He can 
bring no suit in his own name. He is not, 
in the eyes of the law, a reasonable, respon- 
sible being, a person; he is a ward of the 
government, and suit can only be brought 
for him by his guardian, the United States. 
From the testimony of those who have prac- 
tical knowledge of Indian affitirs, I have 
good reason to believe that in the great ma- 
jority of cases this is equivalent to the In- 
dian having no legal means of redress at all. 

Such, then, is an outline of the position of 
the Indians as tribes and as individuals ia 
their relations with the whites. 

As tribes, they have absolutely no means 
of legal redress; as individuals, they possess 
in some cases a very inadequate and precari- 
ous one. 

Nor is their internal condition one whit 
better. Were any one to be questioned as 
to the best and most obvious way of pre- 
serving order and good morals, of settling 
disputes and preventing crimes, in a com- 
munity, he could have but one answer — by 
the efficient administration of a proper sys- 
tem of law. Were he to be told that among 
one class of men in this community — the 
class we are most anxious to educate in the 
ways of order and quiet living, the class 
from whom we are in constant dread of an 
outbreak — there is no provision made for 
any administration of law whatever, that the 
government expressly disclaims any judicial 
authority over the members of this class in 
their relations with each other, yet permits 
its agents (often ignorant and unscrupulous 
men) to exercise a power often as irritating 
as it is unconstitutional, would he not ex- 
claim at the utter fatuity and criminal in- 
difference of such a course ? 

It is conceivable that at first, when the 
nationality of the tribes was — for such pur- 
poses as suited us — conceded, the right of 



» Cons. U. S., art. 1, sec 8. 



' U. S. V. Brindleman, /rnprn. 
8 U. 8. V. Martin, (Dist. Ct. D. Oregon,) 14 Fed. 
Kept., 817. 
« Jlid. 
"o U. S. V. HoUiday, 3 Wall., 407. 



98 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



the Indians to regulate their internal affairs 
would be allowed; but now that nationality 
(except in the case of the five civilized na- 
tions) is practically destro^^ed, with what 
possible consistency can we permit the 
agent to exercise a control as unlimited as it 
is irregular, and yet assert that tiie intro- 
duction of law is an invasion of national 
privileges? 

I liave left mj'-self too little time to speak 
of the crying necessity for law, of the enor- 
mous advantages it would bring with it, 
and of the manner in which it should be in- 
troduced. 

Concerning the need for it, all those en- 
titled to be heard speak with one voice. 
Tiiink of it yourselves. The power of the 
cliiefs to enforce tlie rude tribal laws is fast 
departing, or entirely gone, and were they 
ever so rigidly enforced, they are utterly in- 
adequate to the growing needs. They are 
of necessity no higher tlian the moral stand- 
ard of the tribe, and that is often pitifully 
far from a civilized standard. Many acts 
which we believe to be terrible, degrading 
violations of right and morality, are in no 
way recognized as crimes or punished by 
these tribal laws. What is the n;itural con- 
sequence of leaving communities of eight, 
ten, or twenty thousand people to the arbi- 
trary and inconsistent decisions of agents or 
to an utter absence of law? 

It is not merely by telling the Indians in 
our schools and churches that such things 
are right and such things are wrong, and 
that thsy must do the right; it is by actually 
and consistently punishing the wrong and 
supporting the right, that they will best 
learn the meaning of the distinction. If the 
active, forcible power, unceasingly compelling 
men to deal Justly with their fellow-men, 
which we call Law, is essential for the wel- 
fare, the very life, of a civilized community, 
how absolutely vital is it to the regulation 
and development of semi-barbarous tribes. 
"Wish well to the Indians as we may," says 
Bishop Hare, " and do for them what we 
will, tlie efforts of civil agents, teachers, and 
missionaries are like the struggles of drown- 
ing men weighted with lead, as long as, by 
tlie absence of law, Indian society is left 
without a base." 

But how is this law to be introduced? 
The ultimate object in all changes relating 
to the Indians should be to level all distinc- 
tions between us and them, to make them 
politically and socially, as far as possible, 
like other people. Yet, while we should 
never waver in our adherence to this cen- 
tral principle, we should be careful neither 
to overlook nor underestimate the many and 
great differences that separate their race 
from ours. However firmly we may hold 
to the doctrine of the unity of the human 
race, to the fact that all men are, by virtue 
of their manhood, in some wonderful and 



far-off way in the image of God, faltering 

and broken though the image maybe — how- 
ever we may hold to all this, we are bound 
to recognize the terrible Ibnntlation differ- 
ences that centuries of diverse influence have 
built between tlieir race and ours. 

It h:is been proposed to bring the Indians 
under the law by extending over the reserva- 
tion the laws of the State or Terri'ory in 
which that reservatiim is situated — to give 
them a right to sue and be sued in the local 
courts; to put them, in other words, in the 
same position as unnaturalized inhabitants 
so far as their rights in the courts. 
While this suggestion has the great merit of 
simplicity, while it seems the most obvious 
and easj' way out of the difficult)-, tliere are 
objections to it which, to ray mind, are con- 
clusive. It does not, for one thing, allow for 
the stubborn fact of race difference. How 
is it right or desirable for a sweep of the 
legislative wand to subject a savage to our 
highly artificial and intricate system of law? 
Such laws, in the first place, would inevitably 
come in conflict with certain tribal customs 
which it would be highly dangerous and in- 
expedient to thus rudely and instantaneously 
interfere with. Take the single example of 
the Indian custom of plural marriages: how 
monstrous would it be to punish them ac- 
cording to the State law against bigamy. 

Again, State statutes imposing large lines 
on certain acts could not, with any justice, 
be immediately enforced against Indians. 

More than this, there would be the danger 
from the local prejudice against the Indians. 
We should be, in many cases, placing them 
in the power of their bitterest enemies. 

Even if the Legislature should refrain from 
passing acts intended to bear more hardly 
on the Indians than on the whites, how 
many proofs have we that the verdict of a 
Western white jury, in cases where an In- 
dian was concerned, would be an insult to 
justice. 

What is needed is, first, a proper provision 
for the enforcement of law on the reserva- 
tions by special reservation magistrates. 

These magistrates would, in effect, be edu- 
cators as well as judges, and gradually ac- 
custom the tribe to a higher standard of 
justice and morality. Wliile they should 
not hastil}'- nor roughly interfere with the 
tribal customs, they would, in all cases 
when it was possible, introduce white man's 
law, and thus prepare the way for its event- 
ual adoption by the tribe. It is probable 
that there would have to be a simple code 
of laws prepared (as nearly as practicable in 
accordance with the United States law, yet 
allowing for difference of conditions) lor the 
guidance of the judges. Upon the details 
of this plan I have not time to enter. I will 
not stop to consider whether the magistrate 
should be the agent, or a person learned in 
the law ; but some such way, 1 believe, is the 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



99 



best to fit tliem for the full rights and re- 
sponsibilities of citizenship. Second, to pro- 
tect the Imiian in his relations with the 
whites he should be given the right to sue 
in liis own person iu the Federal or State 
courts. 

It has been impossible in so short a time 
to take more than a superficial view of a 
question so intricate as the legal standing of 
the Indian, or ♦'.o do justice to the difdcult 



problem of how that standing should be 
changed. 

I can but hope that these hints may lead 
some of you to examine and reflect on tiiis 
question for yourselves, that they may 
awaken something more tlian a passing pity 
for the wrongs and struggles of a race who, 
not being under the law, have been forced, 
to their undoing and to our shame, to be ■' a 
law unto themselves." 



4. CHRISTIANITY IN ITS RELATIONS TO INDIAN 
CIVILIZATION. 



HERBERT WELSH, ESQ., 
Germantown, Philadelphia, Pa. 



THE dignity and fame of a great nation 
may lie maintained only by her power to 
bear her burdens, to meet her responsibil- 
ities, and to rid herself of whatever evils, 
springing out of the richness of her increase, 
tiireaien to enfeeble her energies or to im- 
peril iier existence. It is now neaily twenty- 
five years since the question of Negro slav- 
ery and the right of secession, ulumately 
put to the arbitration of civil war, was the 
paramount thought which confronted every 
citizen of the United States. The bitter 
divisions which rent us in those days are 
passed, let us trust, for ever. The storms 
wliich darkened above the nation in 1861 
have to-day sunk below the horizon, leaving 
a sky from which the sunshine of prosperity 
freely falls. Is there, then, no burden to 
which we of to-day must bend the back and 
nerve the arm, or is further effort unneces- 
sary to the welfare and honor of our coun- 
try? Three great questions challenge us 
now, and demand an answer: First, the re- 
form of the civil service. Second, the eleva- 
tion of the Negro in the Soutli. Third, the 
elevation and prot ciion of the Indian in the 
West. 

To this latter question I would call your 
atteniiou this morning. First let us ask 
ourselves. Is it possible to accomplish this re- 
sidi ? Then how can it be accomplished? 
That it is possible to accomplish this result 
I am myself profoundly couvinced, simply 
by the evidence of what has already been 
done in this direction which has come within 
my person;il observati'm. This result can 
only be attained completely by bringing the 
actual condition and capability of the Indian 
clearly and constantly before the earnest 
Christian people of the United States. It 
cannot be aicained by any spasmodic burst of 
indignation at wrongs which ihe Indian has 
suflEered iu past times, or of which he may 
still be the victim. Patient wisdom, increas- 
ing self-sticnfice, unfailing energv, advanc- 



ing through the most varied channels and 
attacking ilie most diverse difficulties, analo- 
gous to such as must be encountered in any 
great reform, these alone can win a final and 
complete success. I can, perhaps, present 
to your minds tliis morning most reaiiily 
a picture of the Indian's present condition 
and needs, and the work which must \m' 
done in his belialf, hj giving to you some 
details of a visit which I have Just made to 
the Great Sioux Reservation of Dakota, 
rather than by attempting to discuss the 
theoretical solution of the Indian problem. 

Let me state briefly, by way of preface, 
that it has been my privilege during the past 
winter, as the Corresponding Secretary of 
the Indian Rights Association, to visit many 
of the large cities of the Bast, from Portlaiid 
to Washington, and to speak to them in be- 
half of a just and wise treatment of the In- 
dians. The interest every- where manifested 
in this question seemed so strong and deep 
that the Execiuive Committee of our AssO- 
ciaiion in Philadelphia commissioned me to 
visit the Sioux Reservation, during the past 
spring and early summer, in order to ascer- 
tain the condition and needs of the Indians 
resident upon it. In obedience to this re- 
quest, I reached the town of Pierre, in Da- 
kota Territory, on the east bank of the Mis- 
souri River, on the evening of May 18. 
Pierre is a t.ypical Western town, of some 
2,000 inhabitants, and is flushed with the 
enjoyment of present and the prospect of 
future success. It lies opposite the (irent 
Sioux Reserve, which stretches northward 
and southward for over two hundred mif s, 
eastward and westward for one hundred and 
eighty miles, and at present acts as a serious 
hinderance to the spread of civilization. In 
consequence of tliis fact its people are ileep- 
ly interested, as are the citizens of Chamber- 
lain and other Western towns, in tlie open- 
ing of tlie reservation, by which the Chicago 
and North-western Railroad, which at pres- 



100 



CERTS TIAN- EDUCATORS IJ^ COUNCIL. 



ent finds its terminus at Pierre, and the 
Cliicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, with its 
terminus at Cliamberlain, may press onward 
imtil they reach Deadwood in the Black 
Hills. 

It has, therefore, been proposed, and a 
commission has visited the various tribes of 
the Sioux nation during the past winter to 
ootuin their consent to the proposition, to 
take from the center of the reservation a 
section of territory measuring eighty miles 
from north to south, and about one hundred 
and eighty from east to west, and comprising 
about eleven million acres of land. This 
uoidd give to the United States a valuable 
tract of country for settlement by whites, 
peimit free access of civilization from east to 
west of the reservation, and bring valuable 
advantages to the Indian by a closer contact 
witli skilled farmers and mechanics. The 
friends of the Indian would do nothing to 
check this opening of the reservation were 
the terms of the agreement by which that 
object is to be accomplished in all respects 
wise and just. But what does this agree- 
ment propose: First, To paj' the Indians for 
the land ceded in cattle, the value of which, 
by the most liberal computation, is trifling 
compared to the value of the land which is 
to be given up. As nearly as can be com- 
puted, lands worth $6,875,000 are to be re- 
signed for $970,000. or at the highest pos- 
sible estimate, $2,470,000. Second, Many 
who have, at the urgent request of the gov- 
ernment, engaged in farming and other civil- 
ized pursuits, will be removed from their 
lands, which heretofore they have been 
urged to occupy and cultivate. Third, No 
provision has been made by which religious 
bodies are to be protected in the possession 
of lands and buildings which they now oc- 
cupy for missionary and educational pur- 
poses, or compensated for losses sustained 
through enforced removals. These religious 
bodies have undertaken to Christianize and 
civilize the Indians at the urgent request of 
tiie government, and have spent large sums 
in the prosecution of this work, and yet, as 
the agreement now stands, tlieir land and 
property is liable to be taken from them at 
any moment by any citizen of the United 
States who may choose to file a claim upon 
them when these lauds are open for settle- 
ment. 

I would state, in addition, regarding this 
agreement, that an important provision of 
tlie Treaty of 1868 was disregarded by the 
commissioners who framed it, and who were 
auiiiorized to procure the consent of the 
Sioux Indians to its adoption. The clause 
to which I refer provided that no further 
cession of land should be made by the In- 
dians unless agreed to by three fourths of 
llie male adults, and tiie same expressed in 
writing with their signatures attached. This 
clause was completely ignored by the com- 



missioners, who were content to receive only 
the signatures of the chiefs and head men. 
These objections to the agreement, as it now 
stands, were sufficient to prevent its passage 
during the last session of Congress, owing to 
the vigorous efforts of the friends of the In- 
dians to defend these almost defenseless 
people from the infliction of so great an in- 
justice, which, notwithstanding, barely failed 
of consummation. I have ventured to dwell 
thus long upon these details, as I regard a 
knowledge of them an absolute necessity lo 
any who would gain a clear idea of the pres- 
ent position in which this — the largest and 
most important of the Indian tribes in the 
country — now finds itself placed, and of those 
dangers which constantly threaten the In- 
dian from the supreme legislative body of 
the United States— dangers which can only 
be averted by the strenuous exertions of 
right-minded and well-informed citizens. 

But now permit me to present to you a 
brief sketch of my journey. On Saturday 
morning, May 18, I ' made my way by 
stage over tiie bleak, and at that time bar- 
ren, hills, which he between Pierre and 
Cheyenne River Agency. After having 
traveled from the town some six miles, we 
reached Peoria Bottom, a fertile strip of 
country bordering the Missouri, where the 
Rev. Thomas Riggs is carrying on a work of 
marked success among a settlement of In- 
dians numbering about one hundred families. 
For years this earnest Christian man has 
labored as a missionary of the Congregation- 
alist Church for the benefit of these people. 
Well has he succeeded! But only alter en- 
countering many trials and discouragements. 
With liie parsonage and mission church as 
a center, he has gathered about him a colony 
of people, once wild and warlike, but now 
transformed into industrious and peaceable 
farmers; men who own individually one 
hundred and sixty acres of land, who live in 
log cabins, some of which thej^ have them- 
selves erected, who care for their crops and 
their cattle, and who, I am told, exercise 
the right of voting like white ciiizens. We 
arrived at Cheyenne River Agency on Satur- 
day evening, and were there met by Mr. J, 
C. Kinnejr, tlie principal of St. John's School, 
an institution of the Episcopal Church, under 
the supervision of Bishop Hare. In company 
with Mr. Kinney we arrived at this place 
about sundown, having passed Fort Bennett 
and the agency buildings on our way. Here 
we met Bishop Hare, who had just returned 
from a visit to the mission on the Moreau, 
some seventy miles from the agency. This 
gentleman accompanied me during the great- 
er part of my journey through the Indian 
country, and to him I am indebted for much 
useful information and many facilities af- 
forded me during my visit. St. Joim's 
School accommodates over thirty Indian girls, 
all of whom come from Cheyenne River 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



101 



Agency, and most of whom are of full Indian 
blood. Its efficiency is remarkable. The 
most perfect order and oleaulineas reigned 
ev^ery-wliere, although all household work is 
performed by teacliers and scholars only, 
without the aid of hired servants. The prog- 
ress which has been made bj' the children 
in the class-room and in speaking English 
is very satisfactory, and would, I tliink, con- 
V nee one of the important work which a 
reservation boitrding-school may perform. 
Tiie agency day-school, a government insti- 
tution, which accoiinnodates between twenty- 
live and thirt}' children, most of whom are 
lialf-breeds, is doing an excellent work, with 
the hearty encouragement of Agent Swan. 
This Wdrk of schools upon tlie reservation 
seems to me a most valuable one in relation 
to the moi'e elaborate course of instruction 
given at Hampton and Carlisle, institutions 
to which the cause of Indian civilization is 
so deeply indebted for the interest which 
they have awakened in this question among 
the people of the P]astern States. Schools 
on the reservations should form the comple- 
ment and support of those at Hampton and 
Carlisle. 

At Lower Brule Agency the work of the 
Episcopal Mission, under the care of a native 
clergyman, the Rev. Luke Walker, and the 
appointment of Rev. Mr. Gasman as agent, 
form encouraging features in the history of 
these people. At this place the Sioux Com- 
mission seem to have been altogether un- 
successful in their efforts to obtain signa- 
tures to the agreement, and tlie object of 
their visit was productive of excitement and 
alarm among the Indians. Tlie cause of 
this is apparent, since the agreement pro- 
vides for their removal from their present 
reservation, and the consequent abandon- 
ment of their farms and homes. This seems 
to me an unnecessary hardship, and one 
which tends to destroy newly-lornied liab- 
its of industry, nnd leaves the Indian in 
painful doubt as to whether his home in the 
future will prove more permanent than in 
the past. Constant removals of location, in 
violation of national promises, nourish doubt 
in the mind of the Indian as to the sincerity 
of the government, until that condition has 
at last assumed a chronic form, and to him 
the terms "white man" and "liar" have 
become synonymous. ■ 

Prom Lower Brule we went to Crow Creek 
Agency, where about nine hundred of the 
Sioux Indians are located along the arable 
bottom lands, well supplied with timber 
which skirts the stream. Their progress in 
modes of living, a knowledge of agriculture 
and carpentry, and industry in their pursuit, 
we found most encouraging. Their well- 
ordered farms, cleanly and comfortable 
homes, some of which they have tliemselves 
erected, and their civilized dress and demean- 
or, give them rank among some of tlie most 



advanced Indians whom I have visited. I 
believe great credit for this favorable condi- 
tion of affairs is due to one of their former 
agents. Captain Doughertj'-, who rendered 
them valuable assistance in house building, 
and to the Rev. H. Burt, who lias laborcii 
among them as a faithful missionary. 

Leaving this agency, we continued our 
journey to Springfield, a small town of sev- 
eral hundred inhabitants, which lies on the 
Missouri, one hundred miles below Lower 
Brule. Here we found Hope School, where 
some twenty-five to thirty Indian boys and 
girls are being educated by the Episcopal 
Cinircb. 

Sautee Reservation was the next point 
visited, where the Congregationulisls and 
Episcopalians have established churches and 
schools, and have secured valuable results. 
These people, who are among the most civil- 
ized of the Sioux tribes, have been living 
quietly upon their present reservation for 
nineteen years. If protected in its posses- 
sion their future seems secure. Under a 
provision of the Treaty of 1868, fifty of them 
have recently taken out permanent patents 
for one hundred and sixty acres of land indi- 
vidually, and are thus trying to gain a settled 
hold upon their territory. 

And now let me draw your attention, be- 
fore closing, by a very brief account, to one 
of the most important, and, hitherto, one of 
the wildest, agencies in the country, that of 
Pine Ridge, which lies about one hundred 
miles farther in the wilderness than Rosebud, 
and is under the able management of Dr. V. 
T. M'Gillycuddy. When this gentleman first 
assumed the position of agent, some four 
years ago, the eight thousand Indians placed 
under his care were huddled together in one 
immense camp about the agency, living in 
idleness, and fed upon the bounty of the 
government. Dr. M'Gillycuddy was led to 
suspect that, alth')ugh he was issuing no 
more than the due allowance of rations, the 
Indians were receiving more than they had 
any need for. By personal examination he 
discovered supplies of flour, sugar, bacon, 
and other provisions, hidden in the lodges, 
and actually spoiling for want of use. He 
found, also, that white men were gaining an 
easy living from the Indian superfluity. 
White men, in some cases, bought from the 
Indians sacks of flour worth $4 50 for 50 
cents. He then began a gradual but steady 
diminution in the issue of rations, until within 
the last four years $200,000 have been saved 
to the department. Most unfortunately. Dr. 
M'Gillycuddy was unable to use this money 
in a way in which it is sorely needed, namely, 
for an increase of skilled employes and farm- 
ers who would be invaluable for the purposes 
of directing these Indians in the arts of iii- 
dustry. The crowded camp about the agencj' 
now no longer exists, as the people have been 
scattered out u^on the arable bottom lands, 



103 



CHRISTIAN' EDUCATOBS IN COUNCIL. 



bofdering tlie creeks and streams, to a dis- 
tance of iwenty, thirty, or even fifty miles. 
Ill each of ilie half dozen villages into which 
1,1 le Ogallalas liave formed themselves, the 
agent has planted a day-school provided 
either with a white or a native teacher. Tliese 
sciiools I can testify are doing an admirable 
work. At the agency a large boarding- 
school has been built, and is ready to begin 
work in the coming autumn. Dr. M'Gilly- 
ciiddy has also organized an efficient Indian 
police force, the members of which are re- 
sponsible for the good order of all the res- 
ervation. This force is composed of' some of 
the best men upon the reservation, and is 
under admirable discipline. Indian teamsters 
transport all the freight which is used at the 
agency from tiie railroad station at Valen- 
tino, in Nebraska, a distance of one hundred 
and nineteen miles. This work is honestly 
and faitlifully performed. As much progress 
has been made in farming and house build- 
ing, considering the absolute ignorance of 
such arts which has hitherto existed among 
tiiese people, as could be expected. Many 
hinidreds of Indians are engaged in farming, 
and I saw houses which would compare 
quite favorably witli frontier dwellings, which 
were the result of Indian industry. Time 
forbids a more detailed statement of the ex- 
cellent condition of affairs at Pine Ridge, and 
I may close hj the remark that, were men 
of Dr. M'Grillycuddy's executive ability and 
hearty interest in the advancement of this 
people generally employed as Indinn agents, 
the solution of the Indian problem would be 
nr ar at hand. ' 

From this hasty and necessarily incomplete 
picture of tlie conditif)n of those Indians 
wliom I have visited, some estimate may be 
formed of the character of the work which 
nuist be done before they shall be educated 
and absorbed into the mass of our population. 
In this education and absorption lies their 
only hope. To retain them on their present 
reservations for any long period of time as a 
se|iariite and distinct people from ourselves 
is neither desirable nor possible. Thus their 



ignorance, helplessness, and consequent deg- 
radation would be preserved and fostered 
indefinitely. It is impossible so to retain 
them because the pressure of our own popu- 
lation upon Ihem is irresistible so long 
as the Indian remains a barbarian. As sav- 
age tribes they must inevitably disappear be- 
fore the advance of civilization. But while 
they must die as nationalities, the individual 
man may be saved by a new birth into a 
better and nobler life. Of the truth of this 
ttatement there can be no doubt, since on 
each of the reservations which I have visited 
there are many whose lives bear witness to 
its correctness. The question, then, before 
us is, how render the agent and reservation 
system the efficient nursery and school-ro( m 
by which the Indian shall be ushered into 
independent manhood speedily and safely. 
Then, and only then, can the .-igent and res- 
ervation sj'Stern, by virtue of its own effect- 
ivenees, be prepared for dissolution, and the 
Indian be transfoimed into a citizen of the 
United States. The motive power by which 
this object can be obtained I believe to be 
none other than an effort, wise, patient, unre- 
mitting, upon the part of the Christian peo- 
ple of this land, which shall exert its infiu- 
ence through regularly organized channels, 
such as the National Indian Association, and 
tiie Indian Kights Association, of Philadel- 
phia, upon the public sentiment of the coun- 
try at large, and upon both the executive 
and legislative depariments of We govern- 
ment. Congress must, by every just means, 
be influenced so as to grant far larger appro- 
priations for education, to enact wise meas- 
ures looking toward the elevation and pro- 
tection of Indians, and must also be restrained 
from such legislation as will permit them to 
be unjustly dealt with. Such reforms as I 
have endeavored faintly to outline as neces- 
sary to the solution of the Indian problem 
demand for their accomplishment the united 
effort of Christian people throughout the 
land. Only through them can the tide of 
selfishness and oppression be stayed, and the 
Indian be saved from impending ruin. 



5. WOMAN'S WORK IN SOLVING THE INDIAN PROBLEM. 



MKS. AMELIA S. QUINTON, 
Gen. Sec. National Inili-in Association, Philadelphia, Pa, 



THAT the present calls for woman's work 
in all the great moral movements of the 
(iay no one doubts. Since she is a soul, hav- 
ing also intellectual activities and heart, 
or'" emotional governance, God, in daily life 
and in revelation, makes woman as responsi- 
ble as man for all she can do worthily for the 



wide world's need ; and as the mother con- 
sciously or unconsciously leads: in. and is, 
equally with man, responsible for the home, 
so in the State, consciously or unconsciously, 
is woman, equally with man, responsible for 
whatever her thought, effort, and influence 
can do for its welfare, or to correct wrongs 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



103 



and abolish abuses within it. The State is 
l)ut the nation at home, indeed, and its 
righteousness or unrighteousness will be 
lai'gely according to woman's wisdom or ig- 
norance, to her duty done or avoided. The 
leadings in national historj' have been ac- 
cording to the loves of the leaders' hearts; 
according to ambition or patriotism, avarice 
or benevolence. What is needed, then, is 
heart, much heart, and right heart, to sway 
the nation's will in its great questions, and 
especially in that before us to-day. For the 
solution of the Indian problem woman's work 
and heart are needed, and because these are 
needed, God has already employed both. 

What has Woman Done on this Behalf ? 

Much in way of mission work in connec- 
tion with the various religious denomina- 
tions; much in way of school work in gov- 
ernment and other schools. Mucli has been 
done by individuals with pen and tongue. 
All deeply interested in Indian welfare know 
of the great service of " H. H.," Mrs. William 
Jackson, of Colorado, in the press, and by 
her book, " A Century of Dishonor," and 
of scientific work done by Miss Alice C. 
Fletcher, of Boston; work which has also 
recently interested the people in Indians, 
and of the service of both these, under Gov- 
ernment, in dividing Indian lands in sev- 
eralty, to the Mission Indians of California 
by the former, and to the Omahas of the 
North-west by the latter. Not of these, 
however, am I to speak to-day, but of that 
union of the women of ten denominations 
known as The National Indian Associa- 
tion. This society has now helpers and 
auxiliaries in twenty States, and during its 
four years of effort has circulated a million 
of pages of appeal and information from 
ofiBcial sources upon the Indian question ; has 
circulated and presented a petition to Con- 
gress annually; has secured the indorse- 
ment and co-operation of hundreds of 
churches, of the entire ministry of various 
denomimtions in various leading cities, and 
of great denominational benevolent societies. 
It has pubhshed hundreds of articles in the 
press in different sections of the country, 
especially in rehgious papers, and has held 
many popular meetings in different States, 
and thus has awakened a wide and deep sen- 
timent in influential centers in favor of a new 
Indian policy which shall result in the civil- 
ization and Christianization of Indians. 

The first impulse in this work was sympa- 
thy with Indian women and children, and 
the first effort was to help create a strong, 
united Christian sentiment, which should 
achieve just Congressional action on behalf 
of Indians. The four lines of work just al- 
luded to have been pursued to that end, and 
with marked and grovi^ing success. During 
the winter of 1882 and 1883, the mass-meet- 
ings in New York, Pliiladelphia, Brooklyn, 



Boston, Hartford, Portsmouth, and other 
leading cities, brought to the subject much 
new interest, and women of national repu- 
tation became helpers and officers of the 
various auxiliaries of the association. Among 
these are Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. 
President Porter, of New Haven, Mrs. ex- 
Governor Claflin, Mrs. Joseph Cook, Mrs. 
Augustus Hemenway, Mrs. Julia Ward 
Howe; the wives of I5ishops Paddock, Simp- 
son, Andrews, and Nicholson ; of Senators 
Hawley and Hoar ; of Rev. Drs. John Hall 
and Ormiston ; Mrs. William E. Dodge, and 
others well known in benevolent and literary 
work. Of the influence and effect of work 
undertaken by such women none can doubt. 
The making of public sentiment, however, 
is not the chief aim of the association, im- 
portant as this is, but is to be soon. 

Education and Mission Work among the 
vnld tribes where now no religious society 
is laboring for Indians. 

Here the association hopes to organize 
mission schools whose aim shall be to teach 
Indian children and young parents how to 
speak English, to become self-sup^^orting, to 
make homes, and keep them in civilized and 
Christian fashion ; thus supplying knowledge 
and self-support to Indians who cannot go 
Bast to our grandly successful government 
schools, but who, without this proposed mis- 
sion-school work, must grow up in barbarism 
stiU. Nor will this work interfere with or 
duplicate the labors of denominational socie- 
ties, for it is proposed, as soon as a school is 
in good working order, to give it over to the 
care of the evangelical mission nearest it. 
Thus the association will do pioneer work 
for all the evangelical denominations in turn, 
and, it is hoped, secure thus new financial 
help for all. 

To this great work of civilizing and Chris- 
tianizing the now uncared-for wild Indian 
tribes of our land all American Christian 
women are most earnestly summoned ; and 
they can do this work while mere politicians 
are objecting that, with the sure success of 
such labor, their political gains from the 
barbarisms of the past Indian policy wiU be 
gone. Some Indian agents may object to 
such schools upon the reserves, but this will 
only be where the plan is not understood, or 
where the agent is himself not fit to be mas- 
ter, as now, of hundreds or thousands of 
human beings. Where the barbarism, squalor, 
vice, suffering, and dense ignorance are, 
there should the Christian teacher be with 
the remedies of "light." One agent said, 
" These Indians are savages, and any lady 
would shrink from coming here; she would 
shrink with loathing and disgust." Not if 
she had a reality Christian spirit. What is 
ladyhood for, but for the elevation and 
illumination of the degraded and ignorant? 
The Christian lady is solemnly covenanted 



104 



CHRI8TIAN EDUCATORS m COUNCIL. 



to such work, and the history of missions 
assures the success of it. In proof of this 
we have but to point to the story of the 
evangeUzatiou of the Sandwich Islands, and 
to the successes of our Indian Missions in 
the Indian Territory, and in the North-west. 
This lowly work in lowly homes, or where 
human beings live without homes, must be a 
success, or the Gospel, God's remedy for sin 
and want and anguish, is a failure. 

If any thoughtful woman needs inspiration 
for this work let her read the statements of 
the last reports of Secretary Teller, of Com- 
missioner Price, and of the Board of Indian 
Commissioners. Let her reflect that there 
are still 68 tribes without missionaries; and 
let her note the dire helplessness, poverty, 
suffering, and defenseless state of whole 
tribes of human beings in this Christian land. 
Let her look into the condition of the Apa- 
clies, the Hualipis, the Papagoes, and other 
tribes in the South-west, for whom officers of 
the army plead, and for whom the wives of 
officers plead, with tears, that women teach- 
ers may be sent among them with a practical 
as well as heart-healing and enlightening 
Gospel. Another call for woman's work in 
tlie Indian problem is for a united and en- 
thusiastic 

Petition to Government for Monet Ap- 
propriations 

Adequate to the industrial education of all 
Indian children, as already promised in vari- 
ous treaties, and as due, for value received, 
from the government. Let all good women 
unite in such a plea, and repeat it until the 
plea is granted ; and let all such effoi'ts come 
to members of Congress from their own dis- 
tricts, as well as before Congressional com- 
mittees. Let women ask, too, that salaries 
adequate for securing men of ability and in- 
tegrity as agents upon the reservations be 
paid, while reserves are needed, temporarily, 
pending the disappearance of the agency 
system before the desired distribution of 
lands in severalt}^, and citizenship voluntarily 
embraced, by Indians. 

There is much, also, that women can do 
by conversations, leaflets, addresses, and 
articles in tlie press, to remove obstacles to 
the fuU solution of the Indian problem in 

Correcting Popular Errors 
Concerning Indian characteristics; as, for 
example, that Indians are naturally more 
revengeful and cruel than are other races. 
With the records of the Inquisition, the 
deeds of Alva, the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew, and other such facts against our own 
race, and, to come to our own time, with the 
accounts of Chivington's massacre of Indi- 
ans at Sand Creek, of the massacre of Pie- 
gans by Baker, under Slieridan, and of the 
scenes on the occasion of the return and 
slaughter of theCheyennes in 1878 — with all 



these before us, we cannot rail at savages as 
being more cruel than ourselves. In like 
manner, with the multitude of facts in official 
reports to draw from, it is as easy to prove 
that Indians are not wanting in aspiration, 
willingness to work, faithfulness, domestic 
affections, and mental, spiritual, and political 
capability. It is easy to prove tiiat they are 
simply, like ourselves, human, and, therefore, 
reachaole by ordinary human motives and 
interests, and that being human tiiC}' are 
salvable, and can be of value as a fresh ele- 
ment in our varied population, while that to 
citizenize them will be also to avoid the 
enormous expensiveness of Indian wars, In- 
dian agencies, and Indian appropriatious. 
That the Indian is a man of force and char- 
acter is overwhelmingly proved by the fact 
that he has survived our treatment of him. 
What has he not endured of robbery, war, 
and persecution at our hands, and yet has 
held his own against us all! Wiiat heroisms 
of barbarous defense of barbarous homes 
and principles has he shown again and again, 
and what noble defense of noble principles 
also! There has been many a Cliuf Joseph 
among the race. And wiiat has the Indian 
wife and mother not suffered from our race! 
Recall the case of those Northern Clieyenne 
women who, when offered food for them- 
selves and children, after weeks of pursuit 
by Uniied States soldiers, and five foodless 
days in a freezing prison, and all for tlie crime 
of returning to their own home, refused to 
come out and leave their husbands and broth- 
ers to the rifle and bayonet. Not a woman 
of them stirred. Not a child left a starving 
parent to live in response to that call. Have 
sucl) not human hearts and souls ? Are such 
not worth saving? Will not womanly 
women and knightly men cliampion such as 
these? And shall nnt Christians s-ecure all 
these human affections, this self- control and 
intrepidity, devotion and loyaltj^ to God. and 
for righteousness? The Indian can do and 
bear any thing for his real principles. Not 
even death can daunt him. Lei Christians, 
then, teach him that to be forbearing where 
anger would be applauded, to be loyal to 
right where treason would be compensated, 
and to be loving where min-der would be 
humanly justified, is wiiat God calls brave, 
is the pattern he reveals, the task he gives, 
and the Indian may yet lead us all in national 
righteousness. 

Women can Help, in the Sphere op Law, 
To secure righteous laws on behalf of In- 
dians. This aid can be given in various 
waj^s; as, for example, by circulating informa- 
tion about our past unjust and imbecile 
Indian policy; by pointing out its blunders 
and crimes, its untold cost and inhumanity ; 
and by calling attention to the reforms recom- 
mended by the present administration, to 
the economical educational schemes of Sec- 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



105 



retary Teller, and to the earnest plea for 
Ghristiau work b^y Commissioner Price. 

Ten thousand Christian women should at 
once send for tlie leaflets of The National 
Indian Association, become members of it, 
and share in the evangelization and civiliza- 
tion of the 262,000 native Americans within 
our national area. Would not such a rally 
secure the power of the moral tides for hu- 
man help ? And would not such effort ap- 



peal to the strongest human motive, namely, 
gratitude to God, and be thus the strongest 
leverage for the elevation of the Indian ? 

Pastors, editors, philautliropists, siates- 
men, and all thoughtful people recognize and 
indorse this movement, and it only waits the 
co-operation of the women of the Churches 
to make it a complete success, to give a fair 
opportunity to the helpless Indian to rise into 
manhood, citizenship, and Christian character. 



6. A NEW PHASE OF THE QUESTION. 



REV. C. H. KIDDER, 
Rector of St. Clement's Protestant Episcopal Church, Wilkesbarre, Pa. 



DISRAELI once said of Bishop Colenso 
that "he went to convert the Zulu 
KafQrs, and the Zulus converted him." In a 
better sense this may be said of sincere 
efforts to Christianize the Indians. Four 
years ago I was requested by Bishop Hare 
to take charge for a time of two converted 
Indians, in order to give them an opportunity 
to study the civilization of the East on tlie 
spot. I had them in my family tor three 
months, and I must say that the httle benefit 
that I was to them bore but a small propor- 
tion to the great benefit whicli they were to 
me. One of them was in deacon's orders in 
the Protestant Episcopal Churcli, tlie other 
a teacher in St. Paul's School, Yankton, 
D. T., where both had been educated. Botii 
had been genuine savages. The clergyman, 
at one time in his life, shot buffaloes with 
arrows. Neither could tell the day of his 
birth, their rude Indian chronology having 
preserved only the month. Far from per- 
ceiving any difficulty in their adapting them- 
selves 10 the customs of civilization, we 
found that the instruction which they liad 
received at boarding-school had left us 
nothing to teach. Their behavior at table, 
their courtesy, their constant demeanor, was 
such that they could rather have been ex- 
amples to many brouglat up under the so- 
called " influences of civilization." I remem- 
ber distinctly their horror when, coming 
home from church, our path lay near a hotel 
which wfts a resort for Sunday excursions, 
and the sound of music and dancing was 
heard. They looked at me inquiringly, and 
I saw mingled in their looks horror and sur- 
prise that civilized people could engage in 
or permit any thing of the kind on God's holy 
day. 

The clergyman, David Tatiyopa, although 
he knew but few words of our language, 
was, by the loveliness and earnestness of his 
Christian life, a lesson to all with whom he 
came in contact. There was some difficulty 



in communicating with them, for, though the 
teacher was better acquainted with English, 
he was very bashful about using it. When 
a more skillful interpreter was obtained, in- 
quiry was made as to what had most pleased 
them during their recent visits to factories, 
churches, and other places of interest. 
David spoke of a trip across the Delaware 
to see shad-fishing in progress, and, wlieu 
asked the cause of his preference for this, lie 
replied (something to cause shame to the 
many who pay so little attention to the 
Scriptures) that it reminded him of the dis- 
ciples drawing their nets when our Saviour 
called them to his service. So it was at all 
times. He was quick to see every such 
analogy with the teachings or liistory of the 
Bible. Upon one occasion we were walking 
some distance by the liglit of a lantern. 
David, pointing to the lantern, said a ^ew 
words in Dakota to his companion, and, on 
inquiry, I learned that he was quotuig the 
text, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and 
a light unto ray path." And then I tliouglit 
of tlie many who in the midst of liffht are 
walking in darkness, caring nothing for the 
enlightenment so highly prized hy t.lxis con- 
vert from heatlienism. In thinking over all 
this, forcibly it brought to mind the anecdote 
so frequently told, but never told too often, 
of the traveler in the Alps Avho, when in 
danger of yielding to the cold, saw anotlier 
traveler lying prostrate iu the snow. Un- 
selfishly using his best efforts to awaken life 
in that poor fallen one, he found tiiat tliose 
very efforts, successful in the end. were the 
means of his own preservation, and thus two 
were saved. So it is with our attempts to 
Christianize and elevate the Indians. As we 
meet with success, and see iiow highly they 
prize what we so often despise or lightly 
esteem, we shall find that, as we convert 
them, they in turn will convert us to a higher 
appreciation of the blessings of our holy 
reliaion. 



106 



CERTSTIAN EDUCAT0B8 IN COUNCIL. 



7. WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH OUR SAVAGES ? 



H. K. CARROLL, ESQ., 
Assistant Editor of "The Independent," New York. 



WHAT sliall be done with our savages? 
ia a question which is as old as our 
country, and yet men are not done aslcintr it. 
All the answers which have been attempted 
can be summed up in one word — extermina- 
tion. Practically, this is what all parties 
desire. They differ only in tlie methods by 
which they propose to reach this end. But 
tills difference is as wide as the difference 
between rigiit and wrong, between liumanity 
and inhumanity, between civiHzation and 
barbarism, between the Christ spirit and tiie 
spirit of Moloch. What basis is there for 
this demand of extermination of savagery ? 

Our society is the organization of tiie 
highest civilization. It not only seeks for 
continued development in the direction of 
the ideal, but it sets itself sternly against all 
that tends to dwarf or thwart its progress. 
"What it cannot assimilate it crushes remorse- 
lessly. Indian savagery opposes this prog- 
ress, and the forces of society combine 
against it. Th&j drive it farther and 
farther into the wilderness; they isolate 
it ; they surround it with danger-signals ; 
they must finally drive it from its last hiding- 
place. It is doomed, and we cannot save it 
if we would. The simple question — but it is 
a question of the greatest concern— is, what 
process of extermination shall prevail? One 
method is personal extermination by force of 
arms. Another proposes simply to allow 
the forces of civilization to work their will. 
If the Indian can comply with the terms 
they impose, without aid or encouragement, 
well and good. If not, the extinction of the 
race will free us from a burden. A third 
metliod aims to exterminate the savagery 
and thus save the race, to rescue the man 
from a mode of life which society cannot 
tolerate. 

The first two methods may be classed 
together as repugnant to our faith, our 
humanity, and oar spirit of brotherhood. 
Their supporters deny, either positively or 
practically, that the Indian is reformable. 
They say that there is no good Indian but a 
dead Indian, and if they do not all agree 
that all Indians ought to be made good in 
this way, they do not believe in wasting 
lime and money and patience on any other 
process of trying to make them good. They 
deny or ignore two basal facts in the consti- 
tution of man, which can no more be doubted 
than the existence of God, in whose image 
he was made. First^ No race is so low 
mentally and morally as not to possess the 



germs of nobility and intelligence. Secondly, 
These germs are educable. 

It is simple faith in these facts and in the 
Gospel which has inspired missionary work 
among the lowest tribes known to the 
world, the Hottentots, the Australians, and 
the Patagonians. Darwin, many years ago, 
scouted the idea of sending teachers among 
the natives of Terra del Fuego. They had, 
he thought, no more mental power than a 
bird. But before he died he frankly acknowl- 
edged that the faith of the missionaries had 
not been misplaced, that if the Puegians 
were animals they were reasoning animals, 
and tliat the line separating man from the 
brute creation must be drawn below and not 
above them. Now, the argument which 
establishes the teachableness of any race of 
mankind settles conclusively the duty of 
teaching, upou the performance of which 
depends the final universal triumph of Chris- 
tian civilization. If it is our duty to cross 
seas to carry light to benighted tribes, what 
do we owe to the natives of our own land? 
If we can lift in fifty years a people like the 
Sandwich Islanders from their depths of 
moral, physical, and mental wretchedness to 
the dignity and usefulness of an enlightened 
Christian manhood, what excuse have we 
to give for the existence of hordes of savages 
in our own territory after the lapse of at 
least a century of opportunity ? I stand 
here to-day to say that, while our duty to the 
Indian remains unfulfilled, we are consenting 
to an extermination which morally fixes on 
us blood-guiltiness. " His blood will I re- 
quire at thine hand," because thou hast not 
warned him. 

It is not that our Indians are not teach- 
able ; it is not that they are unwilling to be 
taught; it is not that we are unable to teach 
them — it is because, with culpable indiffer- 
ence, we have neglected them ; it is because 
we have failed that so many of them are still 
savages. I have sometimes thought that it 
was a misfortune to the Indians that they 
were not all born on an island somewhere in 
the broad Pacific. If they had been, they 
might all have been Christianized long ago. 
Is it because they are too near home that 
our missionary societies do not work more 
extensively and energetically among them? 
Some of the societies say that their missions 
in India and China and Japan pay better. 
Our force of missionaries abroad is being 
constantly increased, and it is to our glory; 
but our missionaries among the Indians are 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



107 



not beiug increased, and tlm is to our shame. 
Some of our denominations deem it their 
duty to send missionaries to England, and 
yet England does more missionary work on 
tlie American continent than we do, outside 
of our strictly domestic missions. It is 
working among the Indians of Britisli Amer- 
ica under difficuliies and at sacrifices of 
wliich we know nothing. Bishop Bompas 
has a diocese three thousand miles long, 
stretching north to the Arctic Circle, and 
verj- sparsely- populated. Other great mis- 
sionary dioceses divide up much of the re- 
maining territory, which has little to attract 
civilization. Bishop Ridley, west of the 
Eocky Mountains, finds the sunsets the most 
glorious pictures of nature in those lovely 
regions ; but, after all, he says, " the Sun of 
Righteousness has produced a far more 
beautiful transformation in the character of 
the Indians. The church-bells ring, and 
from both wings of the village (of Metlah- 
katlah) well-dressed men, their wives, and 
children, pour out from the cottages, and the 
two currents meet at the steps of the noble 
sanctuary their own hands have made, to 
the honor of God, our Saviour." The Bishop 
of Saskatchewan says: "I do not believe 
that in all the wide world there has been so 
large a proportion of a heathen population 
converted to Christianity as among our red 
Indians, in so short a time." 

Such triumphs are not rare among our 
own Indian missions. We have so much to 
show for our outlay that there ought to be 
uo room either for discouragement or in- 



difference. I want to lay great stress upon 
Cliristian instruction as an element in our 
problem of exterminating savagery. The 
Commissioner of Indian Afiairs speaks very 
emphatically on this point: "In no other 
manner," he says, " by uo other means, in 
my own judgment, can our Indian population 
be so speedily and permanently reclaimed 
from barbarism, idolatry, and savage life, 
as by the educational and missionary opera- 
tions of the Christian people of our country." 
While the government is devoting increased 
appropriations to school and industrial train • 
ing, it well knows that it can neitlier exttr- 
mmate savagery nor secure a sound and last- 
ing civilization without the help of the 
Churches. 

This places a heavy responsibility on the 
Churches. If the Indians are not saved to 
civilization it will be the fault of the 
Churches. If they continue to be pests to 
society, if they fail to become Christians, 
the guilt will rest upon the Churches. It is 
not an impossible task. Our pagans compare 
favorably with the idolaters of Asia and 
Africa. The poor Indian's 

" Untutored mind 
Sees God in the clouds, 
Or hears him in the wind." 
He believes in immortality, in the laud of 
spirits, and in the Great Spirit. 
" Think ye he prays not when on high 
He hears the thunders roll? 
What bade him look beyond the sky ? 
The savage has a soui." 



8. PRACTICAL RESULTS OF INDIAN EDUCATION. 



J. M. HAWOETH, ESQ., 
Superintendent of United States Indian Schools. 



FOR more than a hundred years our gov- 
ernment has been wrestling with the 
question of Indian affairs, intrusting its man- 
agement first to one arm of its service, and 
then to the other, with unsatisfactory results 
in both. Now treating with tliem for large 
districts of countr}', and designating others 
where they may settle and remain in undis- 
puted ownership as long as grass grows and 
water runs. How parched and barren would 
our green earth have grown, and how thirstj' 
for drink its rippling brooks, had nature been 
as fickle and changing as our treaty-making. 
But few seasons' growth of grass would wit- 
ness the red man in his new home, until his 
white brother would discover Ihat that very 
country was needed for the rapidlj'-increasing 
white population, and again the decree would 



be made, "The Indians must go.'' If neces- 
sary to accomplish it, an Indian outbreak was 
brought about ; and he who was responsible 
for it, causing all the train of terrible conse- 
quences incident to an Indian war on the 
frontier, went with bloody hands unpun- 
ished, and perhaps applauded, while the In- 
dian, who had been goaded into war, and 
acting in accordance with his education — 
"an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth " 
— was made to bear all the blame and all the 
punishment. 

A new treaty becoming necessary, a new 
home lor the Indian followed, a new farewell 
to the graves of his fathers ; and with face 
again turned to the setting sun, his march 
would be taken up, and his course seem em- 
blematic of his race. And so it has evor 



108 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



been, back and still back, nearer and slill 
nearer the setting sun, lie has been compelled 
to move, until to-daj' he stands upon the last 
hill; there is lelt lor him no wilder country 
than tlie one he occupies to which he can 
go. Civilization almost encircles him. Look 
whichever way he may, tiie smoke from the 
white man's chimney meets his eye. His 
original way of procuring a livin? is rapidly 
being cut off by the advance of the white 
man's lines. 

Where he shall go, or what he shall do, 
are momentous questions to him. He sees 
tlie change. He begins to realize that some- 
thing must be done. Never in his existence 
has he felt more need of friends, or needed 
them more, than now; and, may I not add, 
never has there been a time when friends 
were more ready to respond to his wants, 
and help him in his needs, than now. 

Congress two years ago gave one hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars more for educa- 
tional purposes than the Indian Bureau asi^ed 
for, and at its last session added largely to 
the amounts of previous years' appropria- 
tions. The doors of the treasury begin to 
loosen in his favor, indicating a disposition 
to atone in the future for the bad treatment 
of the past. Year after year treaties have 
been made, and in many cases broken. Many 
of tliem were wise in provision, and would 
have presented the Indian question in a very 
differeni light to-day if they had been carried 
out in good faith. As has already been said, 
for many years unsuccessful or unsatisfactory 
methods had been adopted in the treatment 
of the Indians and management of Indian af- 
fairs. Thousands of lives and millions of 
money have been sacrificed and wasted to 
no purpose. 

The massacre of a camp of friendly Indians, 
most of whom were unarmed and encamped 
in a locality selected for them by the com- 
mandant of a post near by, in the late fall of 
1864, caused a war resulting in the death of 
hundreds of the frontier people, and the ex- 
penditure of over 130,000,000. This unnec- 
essary war invited the attention of the coun- 
try, demanding that peMceful agencies should 
be resorted to, and Congress appointed a 
joint committee to examine into Indian af- 
fairs, whose report shed great light upon the 
subject; and a commission, consisting partly 
of military officers, was appointed to visit the 
plains and make treaties with the Indians, 
whose labors were attended witli success. 

The Society of Friends (Quakers) had be- 
come interested in the matter, and a confer- 
ence of members from several of the j'^early 
meetings, from different parts of the country, 
on December, 1868, met in Chicago, and again 
in January, 1869, in Baltimore, and prepared 
a memorial setting forth the abuses and frauds 
of the system then in opei-ation, and urging 
the necessity of some more humane and just 
way of dealing with the Indians. This me- j 



morial the}' carried to Washington, and laid 
before a joint session of the Indian Commit- 
tees of Congress, where the matter was very 
fully discussed. General Harney, who had 
had large experience as a military officer 
with Indians, was present, and fully confirmed 
tlie opinion expressed, that it is easier, better, 
and cheaper to conquer Indians by kindness 
and justice than by unscrupulous war. The 
conference also visited General Grant, presi- 
dent-elect, who gave them a pleasant audi- 
ence, and replied to them in substance that 
he was familiar with the past management 
of Indian affairs, and sensible of the injustice 
that had been done them, and that he was 
desirous, so far as he might have the power, 
to remedy the abuses of the Indian system, 
and to harmonize their best interests with 
those of the country at large. 

At his inauguration he stated that the 
proper treatment of the Indians deserved 
careful study, and that he would favor any 
course toward them which tends to their civ- 
ilization, Christianization, and ultimate citi- 
zenship. Soon after the visit to President- 
elect General Grant, he caused letters to be 
written to certain Friends in Philadelphia, 
setting forth his desire of inaugurating some 
policj' to protect the Indians in their just 
rights, and to enforce integrity in the admin- 
istration of their affairs, as well as to improve 
their general condition. He also asked it)r a 
list of names of Friends who could be indorsed 
as suitable persons for Indian agents. This 
brought the matter before tlie society for ac- 
tion, which, after a conference of representa- 
tives of the various yearly meetings, resulted 
in a list of names being forwarded to the 
Piesident lor his consideration and action. 
The Agencies of the Central Superintendency 
and the office of Superintendent were assigned 
to the Orthodox Friends, and the Northern 
Superintendency and Agencies, situated in 
Nebraska, to the Hicksite Friends, while all 
the other agencies were placed in charge of 
army officers. 

The instructions to these officers may be in- 
teresting as additionally confirmaiorj'' of 1 is 
desire to have the wards of the nation justly 
and fairly dealt with. They were : 

"You will endeavor to keep constantly 
before the minds of the Indians the pacific 
intentions of the government, and obtain 
their confidence by acts of kindness and 
honesty and just dealing with them, thereliy 
securing that peace which it is the wisli of 
all good citizens to establish and maintain. 
Your success in the accomplishment of these 
objects will depend greatly upon the effi- 
ciency, discretion, and care to be exercised 
by you in the economical expenditure of tlie 
means placed at your disposal for the pur- 
pose, and it is confidently hoped that tiie re- 
sult will prove the wisdom and expediency 
of your appointment for this responsible 
duty." 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



109 



It is, perliaps, due to the truthfulness of 
liistorv, as well ns to the Society of Friends, 
to explain here that their memorial to Con- 
frress and conferences with President-elect 
General Grant did not express, either in 
w(jrds or by inference, their desire to have 
ti:e management of Indian affairs turned over 
to them. Only an earnest desire that some 
better wa}' mi.Lflu be found, more merciful and 
just to a people who had from time to time 
been provoked into war, and then cruelly 
punislied, while he who provoked it went 
nn whipped of justice. Their desire to see 
the further shedding of blood cease, and that 
lenii'ucy which becomes a powerhil nation be 
extended to the children of the forest, wlio 
had been strngg-lin'.r for their right to live 
upon the soil of tli'-ir ancestors?. 

In his first messai;e to Congress President 
Grant alhuied at length to Indian affairs, and 
Congie-s in 1870 enacted a law practically 
preventing army officers from holding posi- 
tions in tlie Indian service. Wliereupon, 
President Grant caused letters to be written 
to other denominations, mooting their co-op- 
eration, if coinciding with their views, and ask- 
ing them to forward the names of suitable 
persons for agents, to which most of them 
responded favoral)ly; and thus the peace 
polic}', which had commenced in 1869 with 
but few agencies, spread out to include all 
the tribes, and most of the Churches enlisted 
in tlie work. 

For much of the foregoing information re- 
garding the origin and commencement of the 
peace policv, I am imlebted to an unpublished 
docunn'nt of extracts taken from the Minutes 
of Conferences of the Conmiittee on Indian 
Affairs of the Society of Friends. 

Up to the time of tiie introduction of the 
peace policy but little attention liad been 
given to the educit oual and industrial inter- 
ests of the Indians, aside from those who 
were regarded as civilized tribes.' 

Witii the great mass of the people the In- 
dian was simpl}' an animal of curiosity, 
tliought of only when the papers announced 
some terrible massacre, and when seen re- 
garded with fear, hatred, and contempt. But 
few p ople besides the noble-hearted mission- 
aries had any just coiicepiinn of his abilities 
for good as well as for learnina:, and the mis- 
sionary had cidiivuted th-^ Held with very lit- 
tle help or sj'mpathy froiu the government 
or people. 

Most of tlie treiti'S made with the Indians 
have had sume educational provisions, and 
in some instances th^se provisions have been 
carried out, but in many cases almost wholly 
disregarded. 

Referring to this matter, the Commissioner 
of Indian Affairs, in his last published report, 
says: "In general, it m;\-y be said that when 
the treaty stipulated the payment of a certain 
annual sum for education, the promise has 
been kept; but when the support of certain 



schools was pledged, without specifying the 
annual expenditure to be made therefor, the 
promise has been onlj- partially kept." 

He does not present a calculation of the 
cost to have made good the promises from 
the time they should have commenced, but 
presents a table showing the deficit between 
the promise and the perfortnance in the years 
1877 to 1881 inclusive, as follows: 

Total cost of buildings required to ac- 
commodate the school population of 
these tribes, less such buildings as 
have been erected between the dates 

of the treaties and the year 1881 $334,000 

Appropriations required to sup- 
port the schools called for by 
those treaties : 

1877 $486,000 

1878 486,000 

1879 486,000 

1880 486,000 

1881 371,350 

2,315,250 

$2,649,350 

Amount speciflcally appropri- 
ated for ihe support of the 
above schools : 

1877 $44,880 

1878 48,080 

1879 46,580 

1880 46,280 

1881 34,080 

219,900 

Balance due said tribes for five years. . . $3,429,350 

There are now 75 boarding-scliools and 72 
day-schools at agencies, the Ibrmer with 
capacity for about 5,000 pupils, and the lat- 
ter about 4,600, making a total agency capac- 
ity of 9.600. Carlisle and Forest Grove and 
Hampton Institute will accommodate about 
650 more, making the present capacity equal 
to about 10, "250 pupils. 

One hundred children have been put m in- 
dustrial schools in several different States 
during the past year, and more are arranged 
for this year, and we hope to increase the 
number to 400. 

Besides these government arrangements 
there are some missionary school'^, which 
may have 350 more children provided for, 
making a grand total of 10,950 Indian chil- 
dren provided with school privileges, out of 
a school population of over 40,000. 

Addttional facilities will be added this fall 
and winter by the completion of a building in 
the Indian Tei ritorj"- near Arkansas City, Kan- 
sas, with capacity for 150 children; one at 
Lawrence, Kansas, for 300 children, and one 
at Genoa, Nebraska, for 150 more, to which 
we hope during the corning year to add ac- 
commodations for several hundred additional 
pupils. Most of this is the work, or rather 
the result of the work, of the last twelve 
years, tmder the embarrassing circumstances 
of small appropriations and, generally speak- 
ing, less sj'mpathy. One of the greatest ob- 
stacles to our cause has been the opposition 
of the wild tribes. This had to be overcome 



110 



GHRISTIAir EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



before tliey would surrender their children 
for school. 

It was my privilege, as agent, to open tiie 
first sciiool among the Kiowas and Comanche 
tribes for their children. It required a great 
deal of patient toil and labor to get them to 
consent to send their children. It was a new 
departure, in violation of all the traditions, 
and in conflict witli tlieir superstitious ideas; 
and when the day came for the opening it 
was a very solemn occasion for them. Like 
giving up their cliildren, parting from tliem 
forever; they were to become changed beings, 
to ^!\ibmit to new ways, abandon the Indian 
world, and enter the new one made, as they 
supposed, especially for the wlnle people. 
Some of the cliiefs came to me to intercede 
for the long hair of their boys: they did not 
want it cut off; if done, either the boy or 
some of his very near relatives would die. 
The hair is cut with them only as an emblem 
of mourning, and they treu)bled at the idea 
of a departure from that custom. It, was cut, 
however, with some care and uncertainty as 
to consequences at first; but tlie matter soon 
changed with the boys, and the last of tiiem 
came voluntarily and asked to have it done. 
At the close of the session I invited all the 
families represented in the school, and gave 
them a feast in celebration of the fact that 
we were providentially permitted to, return 
to them all their children without the loss of 
one. Although some had been sick, rjone 
had died, and our heavenly Father had' in- 
deed been good to us. 

When the vacation had passed, and the 
doors of the school-house were again thrown 
open for the school year of 1876-77, the chil- 
dren returned willingly, and the building was 
soon full. It was the same way with all wild 
Indians; it required great persuasion, and 
sometimes force, to get tliem to put their 
children in school. But the evidence of pass- 
ing j^ears is teaching tliem that good and not 
bad results have followed their actions in 
this matter. A new world is opening out 
before their children, whic'i is reflecting its 
light upon their benighted homes; and real- 
izing that their children cannot live as tliey 
have done, by the chase, many of them re- 
joice that a better way is being foimd for 
tliem, and are glad that lliey surrenaered 
their children for school. 

With most of the wild tribes the feeling of 
opposition to schools has passed away, and 
tiiey willingly give up their children, not 
only to the agency schools, but to go to the 
more important ones, situated entirely out- 
side their own country. 

The Southern Utes, who liave been re- 
garded as the most obstinate in school 
matters, recently gave np twenty-seven 
children, who were taken to the boarding- 
school at Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

The interest of the Indians having become 
aroused, and with it a willingness to allow 



their children to attend school, makes the 
educational the important matter in Indian 
affairs of to-day, and the duty of the govern- 
ment to provide the ways and means f.r 
them. 

Our sj^stem of settling up the countrj'- is 
rapidly cutting off the Indians' opportunities 
to live as Indians do. Frontier lines can 
hardly he said to exist ; or, if they do, it is 
between two advancing columns of civiliza- 
tion, which must soon meet. And then our 
countrj-'s flag will float over a wliole country 
dedicated to civilized industry and human 
elevation. The Indian cannot be educatetl 
and remain an Indian, and he cannot longer 
resist some kind of education. The once 
almost impassable reservation line is found to 
be of that imaginary character whicii by 
many is easily passed, and especiall}' is this 
true of man}- whose influence is for evil; and, 
while they are not teaching from books, they 
are educating with that kind of tutorage 
which comes from association and example, 
and intuitively enters into one's being. 

If it is true, as said, that an Indian can- 
not be educated and remain an Indian still, 
then he must become a part of our body 
politic. If this is to be the case, we are all 
interested in his proper preparation for it, 
and he is not an exception to the rule or idea 
" that he who casts a ballot should be able 
to read it, and, if need be, to affix his signa- 
ture." The cost of accomplishing this would 
be insignificant compared wit:h tlie vast sum 
annually expended in supporting an army in 
watching and guarding the exposed parts of 
the countrj' against depredations b)'- both 
whites and Indians. 

The Hon. Secretary of the Interior, in his 
last report to Coniiref^s, makes this state- 
ment: "Since 1872, a period of only ten 
years, the cost of Indian hostilities and 
military protection against the Indians is 
estimated by the military authorities at 
$223,891,264 50, or an annual expense of 
$22,389,126 45; to which must be added 
the yearly appropriations for subsistence, 
which average about $5,000,000 a year. 
To this must also be added the loss of life 
and the horrors of an Indian war, only to be 
understood by those who have had the mis- 
fortune to be part'cipants in or witnesses of 
them ; this cannot be computed in dollars, 
but ought to be considered in determining 
the policy of the government in its dealings 
with the Indians." 

This immense outlay of money w^ould 
rapidly diminish were but one tenth of its 
annual amount diverted to the channel of 
educating the people who are claimed to 
cause its expenditure ; enough would soon 
become educated to exert an influence for 
peace and safety, and good order and in- 
dustry would reign where the saber ou\j 
now liolds sway. 

An Indian is as ambitious for flime and 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



Ill 



glory .as his pale-faced brother; a chief, 
however humble, is always flattered and 
proud to have his speech written down, and 
enjoj''S as much having liis name in the 
papers. 

This ambition exerts over him a wonder- 
f, lly controlling interest. In his natural 
state the profession of arms holds out to him 
the only road to the temple of fame. To 
show liimself worthy as a lender in this, he 
endures the severest tortures without ex- 
hibiting? any emotion of pain. Death has no 
terrors for him, and cowardice is despised. 

The Sioux young man, baring his breast, 
cuts two gashes and, lilting the flesh be- 
tween them, passes a lariat through it, 
wliich he makes fast to a post or two, and 
then, with his weight tlirown against it, 
dances until the flesh is broken loose and he 
is free to become a leading warrior. It is 
said of Little Big Man, a Sioux war chief, 
that when lie was thus dedicating himself — 
being, as his name indicates, a small man — 
his weight was not sufficient to tear loose 
the flesh, and, moving tlie post to which his 
lariat was attached, he made a bound, and, 
turning a somersault, freed himself, much to 
his own satisfaction and the admiration of 
the spectators. 

The Kiowa j'oung man shows his agility 
by dancing three days and nights without 
food, with his eyes at all times flxed steadily 
upon the sun, while it sliines, and not ceasing 
the dance when night hides the light from 
liis view. 

The per cent, who are able to successfully 
endure this severe test is said to be quite 
small. All wild tribes have some ceremony 
or test to whicli the young and ambitious are 
subjected, all requiring great will power, 
which only needs to be directed in the 
proper channel to show itself capable of 
good ends. Education opens new avenues 
to fame, and does away with these barbaric 
customs. 

But the education and civih'zation of the 
Indian is no new problem ; it has been suc- 
cessfully carried out already as respects a 
portion of tlie six nations and manyoftlie 
five civilized tribes of the Indian Territory. 

And daily evidence is added to the testi- 
mony in the results, not only at Carlisle, 
Hampton, and ForesL Grove, but at some of 
the agency schools. If any one has d(Mibts 
on this point let him visit either of the iead- 
mg institutions: a day tliere will dispel his 
doubts. The testimony of the manufactured 
articles in the shops speaks louder and more 
emphatically than any man's tongue or pen 
can do. The evidence of the ability of the 
wild Indian child to become of highly in- 
tellectual cnhure, as well as a skilled artisan, 
is there found incontrovertible, and so 
demonstrated by many individuals from 
various tribes. 

Hampton and Carlisle furnish most of the 



shoes, harness, tinware, and part of the 
wagons, used at many of the agencies. It 
is interesting to remember that these are 
made by boys who but a few years ago were 
as wild as the chickens on the prairie. In- 
dian teachers generally agree that Indian 
children are much like white children in 
their learning and school days. The boys 
soon learn to amuse themselves with marbles, 
tops, and hoops, as well as bows and arrows, 
wliile the girls as naturally take to the Jump- 
ing-rope, play house, and doll-baby. 

In school hours, when the teacher's back is 
turned, paper wads fly at random, and the 
ceiling shows tlie efEects of good marksman- 
ship; a change of position of the teacher 
finds each one intently interested in his 
lesson. Pillow battles often furnish amuse- 
ment for the night, and rarely is a teacher 
able to find them not all asleep. Teachers 
whose hearts are in the work enjoy it and 
rejoice in being able to see the fruits of their 
labors growing up ; but their labors are 
necessarily more arduous than if in a white 
school, from the fact that they must not only 
start an idea, but cultivate it, too, as the 
Indian child cannot, as the white one, go 
home and have that idea developed, as his 
people know even less than he does; hence 
an Indian teacher's work is not done wliea 
the school hours close; he must be instant 
in season and out of season. It may truth- 
fully be said that the Indian child comes to 
his teacher with a mind as susceptible of 
molding as potter's clay. How important 
and responsible, then, the position of that 
teacher. I call to mind a circumstance 
bearing upon this point. 

A little Caddo boj% who for two years and 
a half attended school at the Kiowa Agency, 
after leaving school was taken sick and died. 
His teachers had not only taught him how 
to read in his week-day lesson books, but, 
also in the Bible, and in some degree under- 
stand its beautiful precepts and promises, 
and had given him a Testament to take 
home. While confined to his sick bed he 
talked to his family of what he had learned 
of that beautiful world beyond, and what the 
Good Book said about it. His own eyes 
had grown too dim to read it, and none of 
the family to which he belonged could read 
it for him, and his mother placed it gently 
on his breast; and there it laid when the 
curtain of life was lifted, revealing to him 
the better world. His mother brought me the 
message to send to his teachers — that the 
lessons they had taught him had not been 
forgotten, and he had gone to live forever. 

Joe Easau, a Pawnee, now a man grown, 
gives an interesting circumstance in his 
history, an illustration of the influence of 
education as well as the power of faith. He 
had been a school-boy long enough to learn 
how to read and write, and receive some 
ideas of a better life and way of living. 



113 



0EBI8TIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



After he became a married man, and the 

head of a familj', money was scarce with him 
and the hirder was empt}^, ills family were 
hmifjry and suffering for food. 

His faithful gun was called into requisi- 
tion and, at earl)' dawn, he started out to 
find and kill something to eat. All day long 
lie hunted, until ihe sun was getting low ; 
fruitless had been his search. He remem- 
bered that when a school-boy he had been 
tauglit that God's ear is ever open to the cry 
of those in distress, and surely that was his 
condition ; getting down upon his knees he 
lifted his heart in prayer and told his con- 
dition to the needy one's Friend, and asked 
for Jielp. Opening iiis eyes and looking 
ahead, only a few rods from him stood a tine 
fat deer, which lie witliout difficulty killed. 
In relating it he said, I believe God heard 
me and "sent that deer." And who will 
venture to say otherwise? 

A few years ago I traveled over the State 
of Nevada — in the winter, when the mercury 
would not tell the whole truth of coldness — 
hunting up the Pah Utes, to find out their 
Avants and needs, and got many of them 
together in council, in the Court-House in 
Minnemiicca. My interpreting was done by 
Princess Sarah Minnemucca, now Mrs. Hop- 
kins, who performed tlie duty so well and 
satisfactorily that I was impressed with the 
opportunity of talking to them of the great 
advantages there are in education. Taking 
Sarah's interpreting for the foundation of my 
remarks, warming up with my subject I said: 
Look at what a noble woman Sarah is, listen 
to her talk, how beautiful her language, bow 
elegant her st.yle. Now, what has done all 
this? What has given lier all these advan- 
tages over the other women of your tribe ? 
There are, no doubt, others there as intellect- 
ual, as smart as she was, but — "Stop I 
hold on," s lid one of the fnh-blood men, in 
good English, "that will never do. I am a 
married man. Mj' wife is a smarter woman 
naturally than Sarah; if she had half her 
education I could do nothing with her. That 
must do." The laugli of the houseful of 
spectators was at my expense, and my elo- 
quent talk was lost in its roar. 

A beautiful example of the results of 
Indian education is before us to-day, in tlie 
persons of the Carlisle Indian Band. Only a 
few years ago most of these young men were 
numbered with the wild children of the far 
West : clothed with the blanket, leggings, 
and moccasins: with long, and in some in- 
stances, unkempt, hair; with no idea of the 
English language, or of their own powers to 
cause such sweet strains of music from the 
dumb metallic horn. Their appearance and 
actions are tlie strongest possible evidence 
of the practicable results of Indian educa- 
tion. 

It is impossible for those of you who have 
uot visited tlie homes of the blanket Indians 



to fully realize the wonderful transformation 
a few years of education has made in these 
youne men, and can make ia the Indian 
child^ 

Tiiese may not be classed as exceptions, 
but representatives of their tribes. 

The Modocs were brought as prisoners of 
war, only a few years ago, from the lava 
beds of Oregon to the Indian Territory. I 
need not stop to describe or more than refer 
to the terrible scenes enacted by them, in 
which two of the commissioners, General 
Canby and Dr. Thomas, appointed to treat 
with them, were killed, and the life of the 
other member, Col. Meacham, miraculously 
saved. They believed they were doing as 
they had been done by. It is impossible to 
imagine a more uninviting appearing mass of 
human beings than they were when they 
reached the Indian Territory. 

Christian hearts opened for them and 
Christian hands took hold of them, with day- 
schools for tiie children and night-schools, 
part of the lime, for all. They have been 
wonderfully changed to an industrious, well- 
clothed community of farmers, livng in good, 
comfortable houses of their own building; 
their children averaging as well as farmers' 
children usually do in learning. Of only 
about one hundred souls in the tribe, over 
fifty of them are professed Christians, with 
Steamboat Frank a minister and Scar-faced 
Charley an elder in the Society of Friends. 

In 1877, Joseph's band of Nez Perces were 
upon the war-path, and made one of the 
most wonderful fighting marches of which 
history gives us any account — successfuhy 
crossing over almost fifteen hundred miles 
of country, with an army in the front and 
rear, with but a small loss of either people 
or property, finally voluntarily surrendering 
at Bear Paw Mountain, Montana, from where 
they were brought, as prisoners of war, to 
the Indian Territory, in 1878. In 1879, two 
young men of the same tribe, who had been 
educated by Miss M'Beth at their Idaho 
home, came to work with them as teacher 
and missionary. One of them, Archie 
Lawyer, after a few months' faithful service, 
was taken sick and returned home, remain- 
ing there over two years : the other, James 
Reuben, remained and, fitting up a carpenter- 
shop for a school-house, commenced a school 
for their children through the week, and 
preached to them all on Sundays. Out of a 
school population of sixty-five the average 
attendance was sixty- two. The influence of 
the school was felt, and exercised a strong 
control over the entire band, until all have 
cast aside the Indian customs, and dress as 
white people. One hundred and seventy- 
two have been admitted as members of the 
Presbyterian Church, of which they have an 
organization, and of wliicli Archie Lawyer is 
now the pastor, and the officers are cliosen 
from their own number. The service ia 



THE AMEBIC AN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



113 



conducted in the Nez Perce language and 
entered into heartily by all those attending. 

Another very notable example of the civ- 
ilizing effects of education is found in the 
Flauduan Colony of Sioux, in Moody County, 
Dakota. Under the provisions of their 
treaty of 1868, the Sioux can absolve them- 
selves from the tribal relationship, enter 
upon government laud, just as while people 
do, and become citizens of the United States. 
Taking advantage of this provision a number 
of Santees gave up agency rations and an- 
nuities, and, selecting homesteads in the 
valley of the Sioux River, in Dakota, have 
made themselves homes. When I visited 
them the}' numbered over four hundred souls, 
and were getting along as well as their white 
neighbors. Most of them had good, com- 
fortable houses, and well-selected farms ; 
tlieir crops were good. I found them 
threshing wheat with two eight-horse- power 
machines, managing the machinery and busi- 
ness themselves. 

They had two churches, Presbyterian and 
Episcopal, a good school, taught by one of 
their own people, a graduate of the training- 
school under the care of tlie Rev. A. L. 
Riggs, at Santee, and the general testimony 
was favorable. They had paid their taxes 
and kept their credits good in bank and 
store. Another similar neighborhood is 
located in the Peoria bottom in middle 
Dakota. These are both the results of the 
missionary and educational labors of two 
noble and devoted families — the Riggses and 
Williamsons — the younger generations of 
whom were missionaries by birthright and 
have grown up in the work, the good fruits 
of whose labors are found in all the branches 
of tlie large tribe of Sioux. 

The results of education are very noticeable 
at agencies where boarding-schools have 
been well conducted : the influence is reflected 
upon the adults in many ways. If the school 
is industrious, as all sliould be, the opposi- 
tion to labor, on account of its being ignoble, 
is overcome ; in fact, it may be said that the 
advance in civilization at agencies of equal 
possible opportunities is mucii greater at the 
one where a good boarding-school is con- 
ducted ; it educates those outside the build- 
ing as well as those in, and demonstrates the 
fact that education is the greatest civilizing 
agent we can employ in liftmg up the old as 
well as the young from barbarism. While 
the well-conducted agency schools have 
been educating those in and near them, and 
overcoming the superstitious opposition to 
schools, and making possible the more im- 
portant ones away from tlie agencies, such as 
Carlisle, Hampton, Forest Grove, and, I may 
add, that of Albuquerque, IST. M., they too 
have been doing a grand work, not only in 
educating the Indian youths sent to them, 
and through them the Indians at the 
agencies, but the country in general. They 



have more effectually advertised to the world 
that the Indian is a man, susceptible and 
capable of intellectual and heart culture, as 
well as the mechanical arts ; that beneath 
the paint which in his wild state spoils his 
face there is true manhood and a heart 
which may be made a fit temple for the 
Most High. Carlisle and Hampton in the 
East, and Forest Grove m the West, and 
Albuquerque in the South-west, have all done 
a good work in creating public opinion in 
favor of Indian education. While the first 
three named are national in reputation, the 
last is cherished with as nuich local pride ; 
and among the first suggestions by the citi- 
zens to the visitor to Albuquerque is, You 
must see our Indian school ! 

The grand work of these institutions in 
favor of Indian education, and through it the 
civilization of the tribes, cannot be estimated, 
and will only be fully appreciated in the 
years to come, when great praise will be 
awarded their founders and conductors, 
whose business to-day is to kill oulj' to make 
alive again. By their help a demand is 
created for additional similar institutions, 
some of which are alreadj'- being provided; 
and we believe Congress will give even more 
liberally, and that others can be started ; and 
we hope more such men as we now have 
may be found to conduct them. 

But some are discouraged because a few 
who return home from these institutions go 
back again to Indian ways. This is to be 
expected, and, until a larger number are edu- 
cated, and a stronger sentiment created in 
the tribes against it, it will continue; but 
even now the per cent, is very small, and 
when the number of those educated is in- 
creased, as it will be very materially in a 
few years, the number going back to Indian 
ways will grow less and less. 

The influence of the Indian girl educated 
and trained at any of these schools is not 
lost, even if upon returning home she has to 
submit to the laws of the tribe and be sold 
as a wife by her uncivilized father to some 
wild or uncivilized j'oung man for a few 
ponies, and for a time bury her light under a 
bushel; her own home, if only a tent or a 
tepie, will soon begin to bear evidence of 
knowledge received elsewhere than from her 
own people. And when a number from the 
same tribe get together, it cannot be other- 
wise than an influence for good upon the 
whole tribe. Many of the boys go out and 
find work, and this will increase as the 
number increases, until, the tribes becoming 
educated, new avenues for business will 
naturally present themselves. 

The Indians, as well as their friends, have 
cause to rejoice that at the head of the de- 
partment, and of the bureau having this 
matter in charge, are men deeply interested 
in promoting the best interests and welfare 
of the Indians. Many years' residence in 



114 



CHBI8TIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



the far "West has given them a thorovigli 
knowledge of Indian character, as well as iin 
appreciation of their wants and needs, their 
capabilities for good or evil. This knowl- 
edge, guided with an honesty of purpose, 
enables them to do much for the benefit of 
the Indian. With minds unprejudiced either 
by sympathy or dislike, they endeavor to do, 
and have done, for the Indian that which will 
the soouest and most effectually make him a 
selfreliant man, as well as relieving the 
government from his care and support, 
which they believe is to be done by indus- 
trial as well as intellectual education. 

A few years hence the educational in- 
fluence will be much greater than now, as 



the numbers returning home from outside 
institutions are increased; but a great deal 
of hard, patient labor, and many years of 
time will pass, as well as much suffering 
among the Indians be experienced, before 
the full fruition of the educational efforts is 
seen. 

Indian education means a great deal. It 
means broken up tribal relationship, indi- 
vidual ownership of property, severally, in 
lands, farms, and settled homes. In a word, 
the acceptance of the white man's civiliza- 
tion, to become an integral and homogeneous 
part of this great nation — not simply a re- 
ceiver of its bounties, but a sharer of its 
responsibilities and a supporter of its laws. 



9. INDIAN CIVILIZATION A SUCCESS. 



CAPT. H. R. PEAIT, 
Principal of- Carlisle Training-School, Carlisle, Pa. 



• * TNDIAE" Civihzation a Success" is the 
X theme given to me by the director of 
this assembty. I am not instructed to argue 
for or against. Following my own inclina- 
tions, based upon experience in Indian 
work, I shall say that Indian civilization is 
not a success. The Negro race occupied our 
attention yesterday. Comparing their con- 
dition, their rights and privileges, their 
numbers, and the position to which many of 
tliem have attained in the country, with their 
condition before they came to this land, 
two hundred and fifty years ago, it is evi- 
dent we have an example to guide us in 
forming a conclusion in regard to our 
Indians. 

The Negroes are in the country seven 
millions strong. Their ancestors came from 
tlie other side of the globe, and from a con- 
dition as purely savage as that of our In- 
dians, either present or past. They are to- 
day politically a part of us, our equals.' 
And, in the short space since their freedom 
began, they have produced senators and 
representatives, governors, professional men, 
law_yers, educators, clergymen, etc., worthjr 
to stand upon the platform with those of the 
same professions of our own race. We have 
in the country two hundred and sixty thou- 
sand Indians, or about one twenty-seventh 
as many people as there are of the colored 
race. We find among us but few advanced 
examples of the red race at all equal to them, 
and they have no like disposition to claim 
citizenship or equality in tlie country. The 
Indians, in fact, have not become in any con- 
siderable numbers educated, industrious, self- 
supporting, or Christian. Tliere must be 



strong reasons for the condition of advance- 
ment of these seven millions of blacks, and 
for the lack of advancement of these two 
hundred and sixty thousand Indians. I find 
these reasons in the greed of the wliite man. 
Greed made the Negro property and brought 
him into the country as an article of com- 
merce, scattered him over the land, and 
placed him under individual civilizing in- 
fluences. Because he was property it was 
policy to increase his industrial capaciiy, 
multiply his numbers, to make him forget 
his own tongue and learn that of the coun- 
try; and so, having many teachers, he 
speedily learned to meet the demands of his 
new situation and extended his value 
rapidly. 

On the contrary, the Indian had nothing 
of this value in him. He would not submit 
to slavery — he gave up his life first. Find- 
ing enslavement impracticable, the white 
man sought after that wliich the Indian had 
which was valuable, and found in the broad 
acres he possessed all the commercial value 
to be derived from him. To get these acres 
it was necessary to drive out and destroy 
the owner, to resort to the cunning arts and 
cheats of trade. And by the many devices 
the white man possessed, because of his 
education, he did wrest from him the lands 
he possessed, until to-day he has temporary 
riglit only to much less than the one hun- 
dredth part of his former possessions. That 
which the white man has gained is the rich, 
valuable part; while tnat which remains in 
the hands of the Indian is mainly of the 
poorest. 

No association with our higher and better 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



115 



life has been in any considerable degree 
allowed lo the Indian. Tie has been driven 
back upon iiimsell", and by all our course of 
treatment forced to compact against us. It 
is a very strange condition that, of all the 
nations and tribes upon this great earth, all 
are invited to enter into and become a part 
of the people of this country, except the 
original inhabitant. Tlie Chinaman, the 
Japanese, and even the Hottentot, is wel- 
come, and finds a home wherever he will. 
But the Indian is corraled and imprisoned 
upon his reservations, and forcibly held 
aloof from the association which alone would 
elevate and civilize him. He meets with no 
welcome, no invitation, to stay outside of this 
prison life. The Negro is welcome every- 
where. He finds in most of our public 
schools abundant opportunity for his higher 
development. He is at rest, at peace, in the 
land. 

I am to-day introduced to j'ou b}^ a black 
man whom we are all glad to welcome 
among us, to listen to, because of his evi- 
dent culture and refinement. There is no 
reservation for him. He is not told he must 
go back and live witli his people. But my 
Indian boys, sitting here, are told by every 
sentiment — governmental, individual. Chris- 
tian, or other — that they must go back to 
their reservations, to their people. This is 
the curse ; this is the oppression that bars 
the way of Indian progress in civilization, 
and so hard does it bear down upon them, 
that I say to my boys at Carlisle, When you 
have enough English to understand us, wlien 
you have sufficient knowledge of some in- 
dustry to enable you to stand among \is, my 
advice to you is to take ship, go to sea, and 
come into the country by the way of Castle 
Garden. Tiien you can go and bide where 
you will. None will hinder. Then you 
may be men among men. Tlien you may 
feel that the country is yours — that the 
whole world is yours. I say to them. If you 
cannot get in this way, then, when you start 
for home, go by way of sunrise, and you will 
see much people and many nations, and you 
may find a better freedom. If you do not, 
when you arrive at yokw own homes, after 
having passed around the earth, you will 
have gained much knowledsre and more 
courage to claim the rights of men, even in 
America. 

I tell you, my friends, that unless we can 
come to this point, and accept in this country 
of these our Indian brothers upon just these 
terms, and with this fullest liberty, we shall 
continue to fail in our work and duty, and 
the Indian will remain a savage among us — 
a curse and a blot upon our history. 

We have tried the reservation principle 
from the beginning. We have tried the proc- 
esses of building up and developing our 
Indians as a separate and peculiar people. 
And what is the result? We have iu this, 



our own free and Christian .\merica, to-day, 
in almost all of our large tribes, a condition 
of ignorance and savagery pitiful, disgrace- 
ful, and shameful to look ujion. Only a few 
days ago the public mind was tortured by 
statements in the public press of ilie de- 
grading practices of the Sioux Indians at 
their medicine dance, and of otiier barbarous 
ancl lieatheuish customs of the Chcj'ennes, 
tlie Zunis, and other tribes. 

We have tried the system of reservation 
education, of mission education, at the 
agencies and in the tribes. We have even 
tried a system of creating a written language 
for different tribes, and the results prove 
only failures. 

Where is Eliot's Bible to-day? What 
good is it doing? It is simply a literary 
curiosity, with ordy one man in the whole 
world who claims the distinguished honor of 
being able to read it. 

We do not try to continue our Germati 
brothers, our Irish brothers, our French 
brothers, our Italian brothers, as Germans, 
Irish, French, or Italians, in this country, 
no! If we did we should have in onr 
free America a German empire or a French 
republic. 

We have established systems of schools 
which make all these foreign tongues 
English-speaking peoples — which Ameri- 
canizes them. We do not compel the Ger- 
mans to locate in one particular place in our 
country; nor any other tribe or nationality. 
Wlien they reach the great door-way at New 
York they have only to express their desire 
to go here or there, and they are speedily 
forwarded to their destination. By every 
means possible we endeavor to make their 
interest one with ours. We teach them to 
revere and respect the old flag, and they do 
it, and fight for it. But these Indian peoples 
are held off, are told, by every influence we 
bring to bear upon them, that they are not 
of us. They must remain as Sioux, as 
Cheyennes, as Comanches, etc. And so 
all their ambitions, all their desires, are 
bounded by tribal interests. Educated in 
their tribal schools, upon their reservations, 
those of them who reach the highest devel- 
opment desire nothing more than to remain 
as Indians of their own tribes. Our Choc- 
taws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Cherokees, 
whom we call civilized, have no desire to be 
any thing else but Choctavt'^s, Chickasaws, 
Creeks, and Cherokees. The same course of 
treatment shows like results with the Sen- 
ecas, Tuscaroras, and other tribes of the 
great Empire State. Their education is so 
managed that to be an American and a citi- 
zen of the whole country does not come 
within the limit of their inclinations or as- 
pirations. 

What is the cure for this condition of the 
Indian? In my judgment it is to be found 
in the establishment of a general system ot' 



IIG 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



education, reaching every Indian child of 
school age, and so arranged as to bring the 
subject as quickly and for the longest time 
possible into personal contact with the 
masses of our own children. 

Over in Pennsylvania, years ago, they had 
German schools and English schools, and the 
public-scliool fund of tlie State was distributed 
with reference to these different kinds of 
schools. It was apparent, after years of this 
system, that they were educating a mass of 
people inimical to tlie best interests of the 
othi-r masses. On all political and social 
schemes of advancement the Germans went 
in a body. Tliere was no expression of in- 
dividual preference or judgment, because 
very often there was no knowledge of other 
than one side of the question. Thad. Stevens 
and otlicr statesmen looked upon this danger- 
ous course and changed it, and the public- 
school funds have since been disbursed to 
the schools of tlie State, without reference to 
language. And so these language lines have 
about disappeared, and there is a better 
state of things, because individuals know 
better and understand better the questions 
upon which they are called to express 
opinions. 

Now, in our Indian work, if we want to be 
completely successful, we must go forward 
somehow to a system that will bring our In- 
dian children into the common-school systems 
of the country. I believe in Indian schools 
at the agencies. I believe in mission schools 
at the agencies. But I believe in them only 
as the merest stepping-stones, the small be- 
ginnings that will start to a reaching after 
better things. 

We must have schools away from the 
Indians — plenty of them. But these should 
be only tentative — additional stepping-stones, 
higher in the scale than the agency schools, 
but still far below the top. Our Indian chil- 
dren must be educated into the capacity and 
the courage to go o\it from these schools, 
from all these schools, into our schools and 
into our life. Then shall they have many 
teachers. Then will they learn, by compar- 
ing their own strength, physical, mental, and 
moral with our race, just what they lack. 
Then will they become ambitious to be of us 
—to succeed as well as we do. Then will 
they learn that the world is theirs, and that 
all of the good of it their trained capacity- 
is able to grasp is theirs as well as ours. 

Ethnologists may tell us that it is impos- 
sible to change a people, except through 
generations and centuries of gradual develop- 
ment, when all around was darkness, but it 
is not true in the light and under the power- 
ful influences of our civilization in thiS' 
nineteenth century. I know no'ehing of 
their theories and abstract'onsi My experi- 
ence is wholly practical, and enough has 
transpired within it to show to me that all 
our Indians need is just this broad and en- 



larged liberty of opportunity and training to 
make them, within the short space of a few 
years, a perfectly acceptable part of our pop- 
ulation, and to remove them from a condi- 
tion of dependence, pauperism, and crime, to 
a truly civilized condition. 

We are made to cry out and blush with 
shame when many of the wrongs we have, 
as a nation, committed against the Indians 
are recited. Many of these wrongs could 
never have been committed but for the 
ignorance of the Indians. To continue him 
in a state of ignorance invites further wrong. 
I say to you what I do know, that two years, 
under proper training, is enough to give to 
a young Indian a sufficient knowledge of the 
English language, sufficient intelligence, and 
sufficient industrial capacity to enable him 
to make himself acceptable, and even self- 
supporting, as a part of our agricultural 
population — ay, and he will have the desire 
to do it! With this two years' start he may 
go into a farmer's famil}'-, may earn enough 
to pay for his own clothing and food, and 
secure to himself the advantages of our 
public- school system. I have tried it in 
hundreds of cases, and in nineteen twentieths 
of them have found it a success. The Indian 
is capable of acquiring a knowledge of any 
ordinary civilized industry. With the same 
advantages he may be as good a carpenter, 
blacksmith, farmer, or what not, as his white 
brother; but he need not stop with these ; 
he may occupy an honorable place in any 
professional life. We are very careful in our 
civilization to bring to bear upon all our 
growing j'outh industrial and educational in- 
fluences ; why not the same for tlie Indian ? 
The government has charge of our In- 
dians. It is great, powerful, and rich, and 
it parades before us, as it has here to day, 
figures to show what it is doing for the In- 
dians committed to its care. They are so 
stated as to make us believe that all is being 
done that can be or ought to be done. Mr. 
Haworth, who has charge of the schools, 
tells us that ten thousand children are to be 
provided with schools next year. But he 
says little or nothing about tlie forty thou- 
sand who are left out of schools. Fifty 
thousand Indian children is about all we 
have — fifty thousand Indian children in 
schools, growing forward from agency and 
mission schools at the agencies to schools 
in the midst of our better civilization, and 
from them into our public and other schools, 
with as much of industrial training and con- 
tact with our industrial systems as possible, 
will speedily accomplish the civilization of 
our Indians. We must not stop content 
with any number short of the whole. 

In working forward to this end there need 
be no further robbery of the Indian, of his 
land, or other rights. Whatever he has of 
land that we need for any purposes of our 
own we are now rich enough to pay a fair 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



117 



price for, and if we do pay a fair price for it, 
it will give all the means needed for the edu- 
cation of all Indian children, and still leave 
to every individual Indian as many acres as 
he ma_Y need to begin life with. 

We have no hesitation in breaking up the 
tribes of Europe, inviting them to become 
American; wliy sliould we hesitate at the 
breaking up of our Indian tribes? If we 
can fairly and honestly show to the Indian 
that his greatest advantage lies in losing his 
identity as a Sioux, a Ute, or a Creek, and 
becoming an American citizen, and he is 
sensible enough to do it, that is the end. 

And now, in closing, I want to say to you 
all here gathered to-day, in tlie interests of 
the education of the illiterate masses of the 



co'antry, and to you Christian people, that it 
seems to me no grander opportunity was 
ever offered to a civilized, Christian people to 
do good — to raise the fallen — than is offered 
in tiie work of redeeming our Indian brothers 
from their savage condition. Individual 
Christians may work for individual Indians; 
may give of their means, of their personal 
labor and influence, and so share the respon- 
sibility of this great work with the govern- 
ment itself, and accomplish it far more speed- 
ily than the government would be able to do 
with the most liberal appropriations. In- 
deed, I believe that it will only be through 
tlie large and hearty co-operation of Chris- 
tian people that this can be accomplished at 
all. 



10. OUR INDIAN NEIGHBORS. 



The following table from tlie Census Report of 1880 presents the 
statistics of the civilized Indian population in the United States : 



States and Territo- 

RIES. 



Alabama 

Arizona 

Arkansas 

California 

Colorado 

Connecticut 

Dakota 

Delaware 

District of Columbia 

Florida 

Georgia . 

Idaho 

IlUnois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas 

Kentucky 

Louisiana 

Maine 

Maryland 

Massachusetts 

Michigan 

Minnesota 

Mississippi 

Missouri 

Montana 

Nebraska 

Nevada 

New Hampshire 

New Jersey 

New Mexico 

New York 

North Carolina 

Ohio 

Oregon 

Pennsylvania 

Rhode Island 

South Carolina 

Tennessee 

Texas 

Utah 

Vermont 



213 

3,493 

195 

16,277 

1.54 

255 

1,391 

5 

5 

180 

124 

165 

140 

246 

466 

815 

50 

848 

625 

15 

369 

7,249 

2,300 

1,857 

113 

1,663 

235 

2,803 

63 

74 

9,772 

819 

1,2.30 

130 

1,694 

184 

77 

131 

352 

992 

807 

11 



S 



107 

1,941 

111 

8,3^ 

64 

128 

675 

3 

5 

96 

63 

a3 

82 
112 
218 
413 

26 

441 

312 

7 

185 

3,696 

1,144 

941 

64 

779 

112 

1,546 

34 

38 

5,149 

435 

600 

73 
828 
101 

37 

68 
183 
521 
428 



106 

1,552 

84 

7,949 

90 

127 

716 

2 



61 

82 

58 

134 

248 

402 

24 

407 

313 

8 

184 

3,553 

1,156 

916 



123 

1,257 

29 

36 

4,623 

384 

630 

57 

866 

83 

40 

63 

169 

471 

379 

2 



Native. 



212 

3,437 

194 

15,968 

151 

250 

1,229 

5 

5 

178 

12;j 

163 

114 

245 

464 

806 

49 

840 

576 

14 

&38 

6,960 

2,227 

1,857 
112 

1,395 
235 

2,789 
36 
68 

9,742 
739 

1,2.30 
129 

1,6&3 
181 
71 
131 
352 
892 
795 



106 

1,910 

110 

8,088 

63 

126 

594 

3 

5 

94 

63 

82 

70 

111 

217 

411 

25 

437 

290 

7 

166 

3,542 

1,101 

941 

63 

638 

112 

1,535 

20 

35 

5,131 

397 

600 

72 

821 

99 

33 

68 

183 

452 

422 

7 



106 

1,527 

84 

7,880 

88 

124 

635 

2 



Foreign-born. 



1 

56 
1 

309 
3 
5 

162 



84 


2 


60 


1 


81 


2 


44 


26 


134 


1 


247 


2 


395 


9 


24 


1 


403 


8 


286 


49 


7 


1 


172 


31 


3,418 


289 


1,126 


73 


916 




49 


1 


757 


268 


123 




1,254 


14 


16 


27 


33 


6 


4,611 


30 


342 


80 


630 




57 


1 


859 


11 


82 


3 


38 


6 


63 




169 




440 


100 


373 


12 


1 


3 



1 

31 

1 

240 

1 

2 

81 



1 

12 
1 
1 
2 
1 
4 
22 

"ig 

154 

43 

.... 

141 

"ii 

14 
3 
18 



1 
1 
14 

"l 

7 

'"■4 
27 
1 
12 
1.35 
30 



127 



118 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 





■3 
1 





a 


Native. 


Foreign-born. 


States and Territo- 
ries. 




a5 
1 


a 
fa 


•3 


6 

as 


6 
3 

a 
fa 


Virginia 

Washington 

West Virginia^ 


85 

4,405 

29 

3,161 

140 


37 
2,090 

16 
1,585 

71 


48 
2,315 

13 
1,576 

69 


85 
4,204 

24 

3,141 

140 


37 

2,036 

12 

1,574 
71 


48 
2,168 

12 
1,567 

69 


'261 
5 
20 


"54 

4 
11 


'147 
1 




9 


Wyoming 








Total 


66,407 


33,985 


32,422 


64,587 


32,983 


31,604 


1,820 


1,002 


818 



11. THE NATIVE TRIBES OF ALASKA. 



EEV. SHELDON JACKSON, D.D., 

Superintendent Presbyterian Missions in Alaska. 



THE native population of Alaska is about 
o4,019,* including 1,683 Creoles or half- 
breeds. Of tliese, 19,698 are classed as 
Orarians and 12,698 as Indians. 

The Orarians are composed of 17,484 In- 
nuit or Eskimo, and 3,897 Creoles and Aleuts. 

The Indians are divided iuto .'3,913 Tiuneh, 
5,937 Thlinkets, and 788 Hydali. 

These are again subdivided into smaller 
tribes and families. 

The Orarians occupy almost the entire 
coast line of Alaska, with the outlying islands 
from the boundary hne westward along the 
Arctic coast to Beliring Straits, thence south- 
v^^ard to the AJiaska peninsula, over the pen- 
insula and the Aleutia.n islands, and eastward 
and northward along the coast to Mt. St. 
Elias, with the exception of a small tei-ritory 
on Cook's Inlet and at the mouth of Copper 
lliver, where the Indians from the interior 
have forced their way to the coast. Occu- 
pying the coast line, they are bold navigators 
and skilled tishermea and sea hunters. 

The Indians occupy the vast interior, only 
reaching the coast at Cook's Inlet, Copper 
Eiver, and the Alexandrian Archipelago 
from Mt. St. Elias southward. They are 
hardy hunters and successful trappers. 

The term Innuit is the native word for 
"people," and is the name used by them- 
selves, signifying " our people." The term 
Eskimo is one of reproach given them by 
their neighbors, meaning "raw-tish eaters." 

The Innuits of Alaska are a much finer 
race physically than their brethren of Green- 
land and Labrador. 

They are tall and muscular, many of them 
being six feet and over in height. They 
have small black eyes, high cheek-bones, 
large mouths, thick lips, coarse brown hair, 
and fresh yellow complexion. 



♦These figures are only approximate, as from a 
combination of cmises the C'-nsus of 18S0 of tliat sec- 
tion is unreliable and incomplete. 



In many instances the men have full 
beards and moustaches. In some families 
the men wear a labret under each corner of 
the mouth in a hole cut through the lower 
lip for the purpose. 

They are a good-natured people, always 
smiling when spoken to. They are fond of 
dancing, running, jumping, and all athletic 
sports. While they speak a common lan- 
guage from the Arctic to the Pacific, each 
locality has its different dialect. 

Their usual dress is the parkas, made of 
the skins of animals, and sometimes of the 
breasts of birds. However, where they have 
access to the stores of traders, they buy 
ready-made clothing. 

Their residences have the outw^ard appear- 
ances of a circular mound of earth covered 
with grass, with a small opening at the top 
for the escape of smoke. 

The entrance is a small door and narrow 
hallway to the main room, which is from 
twelve to twenty feet in diameter, and is 
without light or ventilation. 

Their diet consists of the wild meat of the 
moose, reindeer, bear, and smaller fur-bear- 
ing animals; also of fish, the white whale, 
tlie walrus, seal, and various water-fowl. In 
the northern section they have a great aver- 
sion to salt. 

While they will eat with great relish de- 
cayed fish or putrid oil, they will spit out with 
a wry face a mouthful of choice corned beef. 

Men, women, and children are alike invet- 
erate smokers. While the.y travel continu- 
ally in the summer, they have permanent 
winter homes. Their religious belief is quite 
indefinite. In a general wa}^ tliey believe 
in a Power that rewards the good and pun- 
ishes the bad, by sending them to different 
places after death. They are savages, and 
with the exception of those in sourheru 
Alaska, have not had civilizing, educational, 
or religious advantages. 



120 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



From the bouudarj' line to Behring Straits 
aloug the bleak Arctic coast, villages are 
placed here and there, wlierever there is a 
sheltered harbor with good hunting or fish- 
incr. The population of these aggregates 
3,000. 

At the moutli of the Colville River tliey 
hold an annual liiir, to wliich they come 
from hundreds of miles. 

At Point Barrow, the extreme northern 
point of land in the United States, and with- 
in twentj'^-five miles of being the northern- 
most land on the continent, there is a village 
of tiiirty tupecs or houses and two liundred 
people. Like the other houses of that whole 
section, they are built partly under-ground 
for warmth. The upper portion is roofed 
over with dirt, supported by rafters of whale 
jaws and ribs. 

Around Kotzebue Sound is a number of 
villages. Some of tlie hills surrounding tliis 
sound rise to the height of a thousand feet, 
and are covered with a species of wild cot- 
ton that, in its season, gives the appearance 
of snow. 

Into this sound empties the Noyatag 
River. It is not put down in the charts of 
the country, aud yet it is a broad, deep 
river, taking tlie natives thirty daj'^s to as- 
cend to their villages. This is one of the 
places where the people come in July, from 
all sections of the country, for the purpose 
of trade and barter. The Innuits of the 
coast bring their oil, walrus-hides, and seal- 
skins; the Indians from the interior their 
furs, and from Asia come reindeer skins, 
fire-arms and whisky. 

It is to these gatlierings that the traders 
come in schooners fitted out at San Francis- 
co or Sandwicli Islands, with cargoes of 
whisky labeled "Florida water," '-Bay 
rum," " Pain-kiUer," '-Jamaica ginger," etc. 
The finest furs of Alaska are obtained at 
these fairs. 

Kotzebue Sound is the northern limit to 
which the salmon come. 

Another center of villages is at Cape 
Prince of Wales. This is a rocky point, ris- 
ing in its highest peak to an elevation of 
2,500 feet above the sea. At the extremity 
of this cape is a village of four hundred peo- 
ple, the westernmost village on the main- 
land in America. These people are great 
travelers and traders, skilled in hunting the 
whale on the seas or the reindeer on the land. 
They are insolent and overbearing toward 
the surrounding tribes, and, traveling in 
large companies, compel trade at their own 
terms. They are reported the worst natives 
on the coast. 

In the narrow straits separating Asia from 
America is a small group of islands called 
the Diomede. On these islands are three 
hundred Innuits. 

These, with those at Cape Prince of Wales, 
are the great smugglers of the North. 



Launching their walrus-skin boats, (baidars,) 
they boldly cross to and fro from Siberia, 
trading the deer skins, sinew, and wooden 
ware of Alaska for the walrus ivory, tame 
reindeer skins, and whale blubber of Siberia, 
also fire-arms and whisky. 

On King's Island, soutli of Cape Prince of 
Wales, are the cave-dwellers of the pret^ont. 

The island is a great mass of basalt rock, 
with almost perpendicular sides rising out of 
the ocean to the height of seven hundred 
feet. On one side, where the rock rises at 
an angle of forty-five degrees, the Innuit 
have excavated homes in the rock. Some 
of these rock houses are two hundred feet 
above the ocean. There are forty of these 
cliff dwellings. 

When the surf is wildly breaking on the 
rocks, if it becom.es necessary for any one 
to put out to sea, he gets as near the surf 
as possible, takes his seat in his boat, (kyaek,) 
and at the opportune moment two compan- 
ions toss him and his boat over and clear of 
the surf. They are noted for the manufact- 
ure of water-proof seal throat and skin 
boots, that are lighter, more enduring, and 
greatly preferred to rubber. 

Directly south of Behring Straits is the 
large island of St. Lawrence. Formerly it 
liad a population of eight hundred. They 
were the largest and finest-formed people of 
the Innuit race — but slaves to whisky. 

In the summer of ISIS they bartered their 
furs, ivory, and whale-bone to the traders 
for rum. And as long as the rum lasted, 
they spent their summer in idleness and 
drunkenness, instead of preparing for winter. 
The result was that over four hundred of 
them starved to death the next winter. lu 
some villages not a single man, woman, or 
child was left to tell the horrible tale. 

From Behring Straits around the shores of 
Norton Sound are a number of villages, ag- 
gi-egating a population of six hundred and 
thirty-three. 

In this district is St. Michael, a trading 
post originally founded by the Russians in 
1835. The place consists of a few log 
houses, enclosed by a stockade, the property 
of the Alaska Commercial Company, and a 
chapel of the Russo-Greek Church, with an 
occasional service by a priest from Ikog- 
mute. Across the bay is the trading-post of 
the " Western Fur and Trading Company." 
This is the point where the ocean-going 
steamers transfer freight with the small 
steamers that ply on the Yukon River. To 
this point the furs collected at the trading- 
posts in the interior, some of them two 
thousand miles distant, are brought for re- 
shipment to San Francisco. 

This is also the dividing nne between the 
Innuits of the Arctic and the Pacific. Half 
a mile from the trading-post is an Indian vil- 
lage of thirty houses, and one dance-house, 
or town hall. 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



121 



"We come now to the region of the densest 
population in Alaska, attracted and sus- 
tained by the abundance of tish that ascend 
the mighty Yukon and Muskoquim Rivers, 
and the many smaller streams. Their fish 
diet is supplemented by the wonderful bird 
life of the country. The variety and num- 
bers of wild geese and ducks is said to be 
greater than in any other section of the 
known world. To fish and fowl is added the 
flesh of the moose and reindeer. 

On the delta of the '\ ukon, and southward 
to the month of the Muskoquim River, are 
from forty to fifly villages, with a population 
of two thousand. From the mouth of the 
Yukon to Anvik are fifteen or sixteen villages, 
with thirteen hundred and forty-five people; 
while on the Muskoquim River are some 
forty villages, aggregating a population of 
thirty-si.x hundred and fifty-four. 

On the lower banks of this river the high 
land free from tidal overflow is so fully oc- 
cupied with houses that it is difficult for the 
traveler to find space to pitch a tent. 

In the adjacent Bristol Bay region are 
thirty-four villages and four thousand three 
hundred and forty jjcople. Somewhere in 
this general region an industrial boarding- 
school should be estabhshed fir the children 
of these eleven thousand three hundred and 
thirty-nine Innuits. 

A short portage across the Aliaska pen- 
insula brings us to the settlements of the 
civilized Innuits. 

In 1792 Gregory Sheiikoff formed a settle- 
ment on Kadiak Island, and commenced the 
subjugation and civilization of the people. 
Soon after lie organized a school, which was 
the first in Alaska. 

Also the first church building in Alaska 
was erected on that island. 

For a long time it was the Russian capi- 
tal, the chief seat of their power and opera- 
tions. The present village of Kadiak num- 
bers two hundred and seventy people, living 
in one hundred and one frame houses. They 
have a few cattle, and cultivate small gar- 
dens. They iiave a large church and a resi- 
dent priest, also stores of tlie Alaska Com- 
mercial Company and the Western Fur and 
Trading Company, a deputy collector of 
customs, and a signal weather office. 

A small school is kept at the expense of 
the Alaska Commercial Compan3\ 

Opposite Kadiak is Wood Island, with one 
hundred and fifty-six people. They have four 
horses and twenty cattle, a saw-mill, large 
ice houses, which are annually filled for a 
San Francisco company, but never used. 
The village also possesses a small ship-3-ard, 
and a road around the island twelve or four- 
teen miles long. This and a road one and 
one half miles long at Sitka are the only 
roads in tliat vast territory. The place pos- 
sesses the usual Russo-G-reek Church, but no 
school. 



Near by is Spruce Island, where a Russian 
monk kept a small school for thirty consecu- 
ti\-e years, giving instruction in the rndi- 
mental arts and agricultural industries. Tlie 
school is now discontinued for want of a 
teacher. 

Near by is the village of Afognak, with a 
population of three hundred and thirty. 
These reside in thirty-two good frame and 
log buildings, and cultivate one hundred 
acres in potatoes and turnips. They have a 
large church and ought to have a sciiool. 

On the western side of Kadiak is Karluck, 
with three hundred and thirty-nine people. 
A church, but no school. 

On the souih-eastern coast is Three Saints 
Bay,with two hundred and nineteen ; Orlovsk, 
with two hundred and seventy -eight ; and 
Katmai, with two hundred and eighteen peo- 
ple. Each of these villages possesses a 
church, but no school. 

In the Kadiak district are two thousand 
six hundred and six civilized Innuits, or Es- 
kimo and Creoles. 

They are a well-to-do, industrious popula- 
tion, living in frame houses, provided with 
the simpler furnishings of civilization, and 
on Sabbath and festal occasions the men 
dressing in broadcloth suits and calf-skin 
boots, the women in calico and silk dresses 
modeled after the fasliion plates received 
from San Francisco. They are an orderly, 
law-abiding people, and yet are denied edu- 
cational advantages for themselves and chil- 
dren. 

Aleuts. 

From the Innuits we pass to the consider- 
ation of the second great class of Orarians — 
nanielj', the Aleuts. 

The origin of the word Aleut is not known. 
The designation of themselves by themselves 
is Uniing'-un, the native word for " our 
people." 

Tlie}- occupy the chain of islands and por- 
tions of the Aliaska peninsula, from ihe 
Shumagin Islands, sixteen hundred and fifty 
miles westward to Attoo. 

The average height of the men is about 
five feet six inches. They have coarse black 
hair, small black eyes, high cheek-bones, flat 
noses, thick lips, large mouths, broad faces, 
and light yellowish brown complexions, with 
a strong resemblance to the Japanese. 

The marriage relation is respected, and, as 
a rule, each familv have their own house, 
witli from two to three rooms. They use in 
tlieir houses a small cast-iron cook-stove, or 
neat wrought-iron cooking-range, granite- 
ware kettles, white crockeryware dishes, 
pewter or plated silverware, and feather-beds 
covered with colored spreads. Their walls 
are adorned with colored pictures, and their 
houses lighted with kerosene in glass lamps. 
Nearly every home possesses an accordeon, 
a hand-organ, or music-box, some of the lat- 



122 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



ter costing as high as $200. They dress in 
Aiiiericuu garmenis, and their women wiih 
great interest study tlie fashion-plates and 
try to imitate the latest styles. 

Large numbers of them can read ; an 
Aleutian alphabet and grammar having been 
provided for them by Veuiamiiioff. 

They are all members of the Russo-Greek 
Church, and outwardly very religions. Tliey 
ask a blessing at their meals, greet strangers 
and friends with a blessing for their health, 
and bid them adieu with a benediction. 

The Hon. Wm. S. Dodge, ex-mayor of Sit- 
ka, says of them: " Manjr among them are 
highly educated, even in the classics. The 
administrator of tlie fur company often re- 
posed great confidence in them. One of 
their best physicians was an Aleutian ; one 
of their best navigators was an Aleutian ; 
their best traders and accountants were 
Aleutians. Will it be said that such a peo- 
ple are to be deprived of the rights of Ameri- 
can citizenship?" 

This, of course, was more particularly true 
of the past, when the Russian Government 
gave them educational advantages. Now 
they are compelled to see their children grow 
up under the United States Government 
without an education. Surely, it is neither 
sound policy nor justice to leave them out- 
side of the educational advantages of the 
country. 

The great industry of the country is the 
hunting of the sea otter. From this source 
some of tlie villagers derive a revenue that, 
if economically used, would make them 
wealthy, averaging from $600 to $1,200 a 
family. But their extra income is spent for 
kvass, (quass,) a home-made intoxicating 
beer. 

Commencing at the westward on the Island 
of Attoo, is one white man and one hundred 
and six Aleuts and Creoles. They are very 
poor. The village consists of eighteen 
liouses (barrabaras) and one frame chapel 
with thatched roof. A church, but no 
school. 

This is the most westernmost settlement 
in the United States, and is as far west of 
San Francisco as tlie State of Maine is east. 

The next settlement eastward is on Atkha 
Island, with a population of two white men 
and two hundred and thirty four Aleuts and 
Creoles. They have forty-two houses and a 
church, but no school. They are wealthy, 
using freely at their tables the groceries and 
canned fruits of civilization. 

They excel in the manufacture of baskets, 
mats, etc., out of grass. 

On Oomnak Island are two white men and 
one hundred and twenty-five Aleuts and 
Creoles. They are well-to-do financially, 
having sixteen houses and a church, but no 
school. 

The next settled island is Oonalashka, 
with a rockj', rugged, jagged coast. In the 



small bays are a number of villages, the 
principal one being Oonalashka (Illiuluk). 

This village has a population of fourteen 
white men and three hundred and ninety-two 
Aleuts and Creoles. They have a church, 
priest's residence, the stores, residences, 
warehouses and wharfs of the xVlaska Com- 
mercial Company and Western Fur and 
Trading Company, eighteen frame residences 
and fiity barrabaras. One-half the popula- 
tion can read the Aleutian language. It is 
the mo.st important settlement in western 
Alaska, and the commercial center of all the 
trade now in that region, or that shall de- 
velop in the future. It is the natural out- 
fitting station for vessels passing between 
the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. 

From a cave at the southern end of this 
island were taken eleven mummies for the 
Smithsonian Institute. 

One hundred and ninety miles west of 
Oonalashka are the celebrated Frybyloff, or 
as they are popularly called, Seal Islands. 

The village of St. Paul, on an island of the 
same nanie, is laid out in regular streets like 
an American village, and has sixty-four 
houses, together with a large church, a 
school-house, and priest's residence. 

The population is thirteen white men, two 
white women, and two hundred and eiglity- 
four Aleuts. 

Twenty-seven miles to the south-east is 
the' companion island of St. George, with 
four white men and eighty-eight Aleuts. 
They have a church and school. 

These islands are leased by the United 
States Government to the Alaska Commercial 
Company at an annual rental of $55,000. By 
the terms of the lease, the company is al- 
lowed to take one hundred thousand seal- 
skins each year, upon which they pay the 
government a royalty of $262,500. The 
revenue of these islands since 1870 has re- 
turned to the government more than half 
the sum paid to Russia for the whole country. 

From these two islands come nearly all the 
seal-skins of commerce. There is a small 
school on each island, supported at the ex- 
pense of the company. 

The native population are encouraged to 
deposit their surplus earnings in a savings- 
bank. 

In the immediate vicinity of Oonalashka, 
on the island of Spiricin, is Borka, with one 
white man and one hundred and thirty-nine 
Aleuts and Creoles. 

This village is noted for its cleanliness. 
With their white- scrubbed and neatly-sanded 
floors, their clear, clean windows, neat bed- 
ding, tidy rooms, and abundance of wild 
flower bouquets on tables and window-sills, 
they may properly be called the Hollanders 
of Alaska. 

But with all these evidences of civilization 
and thrift, they are deprived of the advan- 
tages of a school for their children. 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



123 



To tlie easLwiird near tlie southern end of 
tlie Aliaskii peninsula is Beli<ofsky, with a 
popiikuion of nine white men, two wiiite 
women, and two hundred and lifcy-seven 
Aleuts and Creoles. In addition to the 
buildings of the ,i;Teat trading tirms, the vil- 
lage has thirty irame Jiou.-ses and twenty- 
seven barrabaras. 

In 1880, they raised among themselves 
$7,000 for the erection of a new church. 
One-half of them can read and write in the 
Aleutian language, and thej' support a small 
school. Tlieir revenue from the sale of sea- 
otter skins amounts to about ^100,000 a 
year, or $373 for every man, woman, and 
child in the village. 

On the island of Ounga, one of the Shum- 
agin group, is a settlement of fifteen white 
men and one hundred and seventy natives. 
As, b}' a regulation of tlie United States 
Treasury Department, only natives are al- 
lowed to hunt ihe sea-otter, these while men 
have married native womeu, aud thereby 
become natives in the eyes of the law. The 
revenue of the sea-otter trade in this village 
averages about $600 a year to each fjimily. 

Off the south coast of the Shumagin 
Islands are the famous cod banks of Alaska, 
from which are taken froiii 500,000 to 600,- 
000 fish annually. 

In the Aleutian district are 1,890 Aleuts 
and 479 Creoles. 

Adding to these the civilized Innuits of 
the Kadiak district and the civilized Indians 
of the Kenai district, and we have the strange 
sight in this land of schools of six thousand 
civilized people in one section of our country 
for whom no public provision has been made 
for education. 

Surely it is high time that the American 
people should demand that Congress provide 
at once for that distant portion of our com- 
mon country. The case is the more urgent 
as only one in one hundred can speak our 
language, and one in five hundred read it. 

It is a matter of national importance that 
that large civilized population should have 
English schools, so that their children should 
grow up acquainted with the language and 
in sympathy with the institutions of the 
country of which they are citizens. 

From the cimsiderationof tlie Orarian fam- 
ily, savage and civilized, we pass to the second 
great family stock of Alaska — the Indian. 

Tl.NNEH. 

The first large subdivision of these people 
is the Tinueh. 

This family extends from the Arctic Ocean 
to old Mexico, and includes a great many 
tribes; among them being the Apache and 
Navajo of Arizona. 

Tumeh is the native word for "people." 
The Tinneh of Alaska are tall, well formed, 
strong and courageous, with great powers of 
endurance. 



They are great himters and fishers. They 
consider it a disgrace — an unfair advantage 
over a black bear — to shoot him. but boldly 
attack him with a knife in a square oi)ou 
fight. Polj'gaujy prevails among them, fre- 
quently having more than one, but scldum 
more than three, wives. "Wives are taken 
and discarded at pleasure. Among some of 
them female infanticide is prevalent. Tiie 
bodies of the dead are buried in boxes above 
ground. Shamanism and witchcraft, with all 
their attendant barbarities, prevail. 

They also believe in a multitude of spirits 
good and bad. 

On the lower course of the Yukon and 
Muskoquim Rivers, and in the great range 
of country north and south bordering on the 
Innuit tribes of the coast, are the western 
Tinneh, the Ingahks of the Russians, num- 
bering in three bands about eighteen hun- 
dred. 

From the junction of the Yukon and Tan- 
anah Rivers westward to the British line, 
from the Innuit on the Arctic shore almost 
to Lynn Channel on the south, is the home 
of the Kutchin tribes. They number, with 
the Ah-tena tribe on Copper River, about 
three thousand three hundred. 

Into their country the American miners 
are now pressing for gold, and if we would 
improve on the experience of the past, and 
save future bloody, cruel, and costly wars — 
if we would do justly aud conserve the cause 
of humanity and promote the highest inter- 
ests of the State, we will hasten to send 
Christian teachers into that region before the 
native population becomes embittered against 
the American people. " An ounce of pre- 
vention," etc. 

Around the shores of Cook's Inlet is the 
Kenai tribe, numbering eight hundred and 
thirteen souls. They have largely been 
brought under the influence of tlie Russo- 
Greek Church and become civilized. They 
dwell in substantial and well-built log houses 
with spruce-bark roofs. They have churches, 
but no schools. 

Thlinket. 

The second large subdivision of the In- 
dians is the Thlinket famih', composed of 
ten tribes occupying the islands of the Alex- 
ander Archipelago and coasts adjacent. They 
number six thousand. 

Intimately associated with these are seven 
hundred and eighty-eight Ilydahs, occupy- 
ing the southern end of Prince of Wales 
Island. 

Tlie Thlinkets are a hardy, self-reliant, in- 
dustrious, self-supporting, well-to-do, warlike, 
superstitious race, whose veiy name is a ter- 
ror to the civilized Aleuts to the west, as well 
as to the savage Tinneh to the north, of them. 

Occupying the extreme northern section of 
Lynn Channel and the valleys of the Chilcat 
and Cliilcoot rivers is the Chilcat tribe, num- 



124 



CHRISTIAN' EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



beriiig 988. They are great traders, being 
the "middlemen" of their region, carrying 
the goods of commerce to tlie interior and 
exchanging them for furs, vvliich are brought 
to the coast, and in turn exchan,sied for more 
merchandise. Their country is on the higli- 
way of the gold-seekers to tlie interior. This 
summer two salmon canneries have been es- 
tabUshed among them. 

In the summer of 1880 I established a 
school among them, with Mrs. Sarah Dickin- 
son, a Christian Tongas Indian woman, as 
teacher. In 1881 the station was enlarged 
by the arrival of Rev. Eugene S. Willard and 
family from Illinois, and the erection of a 
teacher's residence. In 188:^ Miss Bessie M. 
Mathews, of Monmouth, III., was sent out to 
take charge of a boarding department, which 
was opened in 1883. 

The station is called Haines, and has a 
post-office. Thirty miles up the Chilcat River, 
in the village of VVillard, is a. branch school, 
in cha,rgo of Mr. and Mrs. Louie Paul, native 
teachers. 

One hundred miles southward is the Hoon- 
yah tribe, occupying both sides of Cross 
Sound, and numbering 908. In 1881 I 
erected a school-house and teachers' resi- 
dence at their principal village on Chiehagoff 
Island, and placed Mr. and Mrs. "Walter B. 
Styles, of New York city, in charge. The 
station has been named Boyd. 

A few miles to the eastward, on Adairalty 
Island, is the Auk tribe, numbering 340. In 
their region valuable gold mines liave been 
opened, aud an American mining village es- 
tablished at Juneau. A summer-school is 
furnished them by Mrs. VV. H. R. Corlies. 

A few miles to the south, on the main-land, 
is the Takoo tribe, numbering 269. A sum- 
mer-school was held among them in 1880 by 
Rev. and Mrs. W. H. R. Corlies. of Philadel- 
phia. In 1882, pressed by the importunities 
of the leading men of the tribe, he took np 
his abode among them, and erected school 
and residence buildings at Tsek'-nuk-sank'-y. 
On the south-westerti side of Admiralty 
Island is the Hootzenoo tribe, numbering 666. 
This tribe has for several years been asking 
for a teacher, aud probably next season one 
will be sent. 

Last fall a United States revenue cutter 
found it necessary to shell one of their vil- 
lages. The necessity for such action would 
have been averted if they could have been 
under the influence of a judicious Christian 
teacher. The Nortli-west Trading Company 
has estabhshed large flsh-oil works and a 
trading-post among them. 

To the south, on Kou and Kuprianoff Is- 
lands, is the Kake tribe, ntirabering 568. 
These will probably be furnislied next season 
with school facilities at Roberts, on the north 
end of Prince of Wales Island. 

Kastward, around the mouth and lower 
course of the Stickeeu River, is the Stickeen 



tribe. They number 317. Their principal 
village is at Fort Wrangell, on an island of 
the same name. 

At this point, in the tall of 1817, I located 
Mrs. A. R. M'Farland, the first white teacher 
in South-eastern Alaska after the transfer. 
In 1878 Rev. S. Hall Young, of West Vir- 
ginia, was sent out, and a boarding depart- 
ment for girls established by Mrs. A. R. 
M'Farland. In 1879 Miss Maggie A. Dun- 
bar, of Steubenville, was sent out, and the 
erection of a suitable building commenced, 
which was liuished aud occupied the follow- 
ing year. 

The same year Rev. W. H. R. Corlies and 
family arrived. Mrs. Corlies opened a school 
on the beach for visiting Indians, and her 
husband a night-school for adults. He also 
served as missionary physician to the place. 

In 1882 Rev. John W. M'Farland was 
added to the teaching force, and Mrs. S. Hall 
Young commenced a small industrial school 
for boys. 

Two hundred miles south of Fort Wrangell 
is the Tongass tribe, numbering 273. Some 
of them cross over to British Columbia, and 
find school privileges at Fort Simpson, a sta- 
tion of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of 
Canada. 

West of the Tongass, on the southern half 
of Prince of Wales Island, is the Hydah tribe, 
numbering 788. They are a large, well-, 
formed, and handsome race, with light com- 
plexion, and have long been noted for their 
bravery and ferocity in war. Terrorizing all 
the neighboring tribes, they were known as 
the "buhdogs" of the North Pacific. They 
have not even hesitated to attack and plun- 
der English and American vessels. In 1854 
they held the captain and crew of an Amer- 
ican vessel in captivity until ransomed by the 
Hudson Bay Fur Company. Their villages 
are remarkable for the number of totem sticks. 
These are carved logs from one to two feet in 
diameter, and from twenty to sixty feet high. 
Some of them contain hollow cavities, in 
which are placed the ashes of cremated dead 
chiefs; others are heraldic, and represent the 
family totem or orders. In some cases a 
large oval opening through one of these 
sticks forms the entrance to the house; in 
others the pole is at one side of the entrance. 
The house is a large, low, plank building, 
from forty to fifty feet square, with a fire- 
place in the center of the floor, and a large 
opening in the roof for the escape of the 
smoke. Some of them have inserted win- 
dows and doors into their buildings, aud pro- 
cured bedsteads, tables, stoves, dishes, and 
other appliances of civilized life. Their food 
consists largely of fish, dried or fresh, accord- 
ing to the season. Their country also abounds 
with wild berries and deer. The berries are 
preserved in fish-oil for winter use. Their 
coast also abounds with good clams. They 
raise large quantities of potatoes. The Hy- 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



12.1 



dalis are noted for their skill in carving wood, 
bone, g:old, silver, and stone. The finest of 
the great cedar canoes of the North-west 
coast are niaunfactured by tlioin. They prac- 
tice polygamj'- and hold slaves. The husband 
buys his wife, frequently while a mere girl, 
from her parents. Il' she does noc suit slie 
can be returned and the price refunded. 
Chastity is uncommon. They are inveterate 
gamblers. 

Like the other heathen tribes on that coast 
they live in perpetual fear of evil spirits, and 
give large sums to the conjurers and medi- 
cine-men, who by their incantations are .sup- 
posed to secure immnnitj- from the evil influ- 
ences of the spirits, lu sickness their main 
reliance is upon the incantatious of their 
medicine-men, and death is ascribed to the 
evil influence of an enemy, or witchcraft; 
and whoever is suspected of exerting that 
influence is killed. The dead are usnally 
burned, and the ashes placed in a small box 
and deposited in a house or a totem stick. 
An election to chieftainship is purchased by 
a ''pot-latch,'' or giving away at presents ot 
goods and money. These are common to the 
native tribes on the Pacitic coast from Puget 
Sound to Alaska. 

An ambitious young man will work hard 
for years, and save his earnings tliat he maj? 
make a pot-latch. If unable to accumulate a 
sufficient sum of himself, his relatives will 
add to his collection. ^Yhen the time arrives 
the Indians are invited for hundreds of miles 
around. It is a season of dancing and other 
festivities, during which llie entire accumu- 
lation of years is given away, and the giver 
impoverislied. 

He, however, secures position and renown, 
and soon recovers in the gifts of others more 
than he gave away. 

The customs of the Hydahs are largely the 
customs of all the Thlinket tribes. 

On the 22d of August, 1881, I established 
a mission among them at the village of How- 
can, placing Mr. James E. Chapman in cliarge 
as teacher. In the spring of 1882, Rev. J. 
Loomis Gould and family, of West Virginia, 
were sent to the Hrdahs at Jackson. The 
same year some laiiies in Brooklyn, N. Y., 
provided a saw-mill for the station. And in 
the fall of that year Miss Clara A. Gould was 
added to the teaching-force at that station. 

In the northern portion of Prnice of "Wales 
Island is the Hanigaii tribe, numbering 587. 
The establishment of a school among them at 
Roberts is under consideration. 

To the north of Roberts, on the western 
coast of BaranofE, is the Sitka tribe num- 
bering seven hundred and twenty-one. Their 
chief viUage is at Sitka, the old capital 
of the Russian possessions iu America. It 
was their political, commercial, religious, and 
educational center. As early as 1805 a 
scliool was opened at Sitka. It held a very- 
precarious existence, liowever, until 1820, 



when it came under the charge of a naval 
officer, who kept a good school for thirteen 
years. In 1833 this school came under ti]o 
direction of Etolin, who still further in- 
creased its efficiency. Etolin was a creolo 
who, by force of ability and merit, raised 
liimself to the highest position in the 
country, that of chief director of the Fur 
Company and governor of the colony. He 
was a Lutheran, the patron of schools and 
churches. While governor he erected a 
Prott-'Stant church at Sitka, and presented it 
with a small pipe-organ, which is still in 
use. 

In 1840, besides the colonial school at 
Sitka, was one for orphan boys and sous of 
workmen and subaltern employes of the 
Fur Company, in which were taught reading, 
vv riling, arithmetic, grammar, mechanical 
trades, and religion. The most proficient 
of the pupils, at the age of seventeen, were 
advanced to the colonial school and prepared 
for the navy or priesthood. The number of 
boarders was limited to fifty. The school 
was in charge of Lieutenant-Commander 
Prince Maxntoff, assistant governor of the 
colony. In 1847 the attendance was fifty- 
two; in 1849, thirty-nine; and in 1861, 
twenty-seven. 

In 1839 a girls' school of a similar charac- 
ter was established and the number of board- 
ers limited to forty. The course of study 
comprised the Russian language, reading, 
writing, arithmetic, household work, sewing, 
and religion. In 1848 the school numbered 
thirty-two; in 1849, thirty-nine; and in 
1861, twenty-six. 

In 1841 a theological school was estab- 
lished at Sitka, which, in 1849, was ad- 
vanced to the grade of a seminary. In 1848 
it reported thirty boarders, twelve day 
pupils, and twelve Creoles being educated in 
Russia. Of those in Russia, two were in 
training for pilots, one as merchant, one 
gunsmith, one fur dealer, one tailor, and one 
cobbler. In 1849 the attendance was re- 
ported twenty-eight, with eleven others in 
Russia, 

In 1859 and 1860 the common schools at 
Sitka were remodeled in order to secure 
greater efficiency. The course of study con- 
sisted of Russian, Slavonian, and English 
languages, arithmetic, history, geography, 
book-keeping, geometry, trigonometrj'-, navi- 
gation, astrononi)', and religion. A knowl- 
edge of Russian, reading, writing, and the 
four rules of arithmetic, was required for 
admission. A pupil failing to pass exam- 
ination two years in succession was dropped. 
The course extended over five years. Extra 
compensation was allowed teachers who 
secured the best results. The faculty con- 
sisted of a principal, who was a graduate of 
the School of Commercial Navigation ; a 
free pilot, who taught navigation; an em- 
ploye of the company who taught book- 



126 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



keeping and commercial branches ; one 
priest and two licentiates, graduates of the 
University of St. Petersburg. 

The corresponding school for girls was in 
charge of a lady graduate of one of the 
highest female scliools in Russia, with tw"0 
male teachers. 

This made five schools at Sitka: two for 
the children of the lower class, two for the 
higher class, and one seminary. 

About the time of the transfer the teach- 
ers were recalled to Russia and the schools 
suspended. Tins condition of things lasted 
until the winter of 1877 and "78, when I 
secured tlie appointment of Rev. John G-. 
Brady for Sitl^a, and in April, 1878, a school 
was opened by Mr. Brady and Miss Fannie 
B. Kellogg. la December, through a com- 
bination of ci re inn stances, it was discon- 
tinued. In the spring of 1880 Miss Olinda 
Austin was sent out from New York city, 
and reopened tlie school April 5 in one of the 
rooms of the gnard-house witli one hundred 
and three children present. This number 
increased to one hundred and thiriy. Then 
some of the parents applied for admission, 
but could not be received, as the room 
would not hold any more. Miss Austin 
received the support and substantial assist- 
ance of Captain Beardslee, then in command 
of the United States ship Jamestown, wlio 
proved himself a warm friend of tlie enter- 
prise. In July the school was moved to 
the old hospital building. In November 
some of the boys applied to the teacher for 
permission to live at tlie school-house. At 
home there was so much drinking, talking, 
and carousing that they could not study. 
The teaclier said she had no accommoda- 
tions, bedding, or food for them. But they 
were so much in earnest that they said tiiey 
would provide for tliemseives. Upon re- 
ceiving permission, seven Indian boys, thir- 
teen and fourteen years of age, bringing a 
blanket each and a piece of tin for a looking- 
glass, voluntarily left their homes and took 
up their abode in a vacant room of one of 
the Government buildings. Thus com- 
menced the boarding department of tlie 
Sitka school. Soon other boys joined them. 
One was a boy who had been taken out and 
shot as a witch, but was rescued by the 
officers of the Jamestown and placed in the 
school. Oapt. Henry G-iass, who succeeded 
Captain Beardslee in command of the James- 
town, from the first, with his officers, took 
a deep interest in the school. As he had 
opportunity he secured boys from dis- 
tant tribes and placed them in the school, 
until there are twenty-seven boys in the 
boarding department. 

In February, 1881, Captain Glass estab- 
lished a rule compelling the attendance of 
the Indian children upon the daj'-school, 
which was a move in the right direction 
and has worked admirably. He first caused 



the Indian village to be cleaned up, ditches dug 
around each house for drainagre, and the 
houses whitewashed. These sanitary regu- 
lations have already greatly lessened the 
sickness and death-rate among them. He 
then caused the houses to be numbered, 
and an accurate census taken of the in- 
mates, adults and children. He then caused 
a label to be made of tin for each child, 
which was tied around the neck of the 
child, with his or her number and the num- 
ber of the house on it, so that, if a child 
was found on the street during school hours, 
the Indian policeman was inider orders to 
take the numbers on the labels and report 
thera, or the teacher each day would re- 
port that such numbers from such houses 
were absent that day. The following morn- 
ing the head Indian of the house to which 
the absentee belonged was f^ummoned to 
appear and answer for the child. If the 
child was willfully absent, the head man was 
fined or imprisoned. A few cases of fine 
were sufficient. As soon as tliey found the 
captain in earnest, the children were all in 
school. This ran the average attendance nyi 
to two hundred and thirty and two hundred 
and fifty, one day reaching, with adults, two 
hundred and seventy-one. In April Mr. 
Alonzo B. Austin was associated with his 
daughter in the school, and Mrs. Austin was 
appointed matron. 

With the increase of public attention to 
Alaska, and the growing interest of t'he 
country in the education of Indian children 
in industrial schools, the time has come to 
add an industrial department to the school 
at Sitka. 

Tlie nearest school of the kind to Alaska 
is at Forest Grove, Oregon. But Forest 
Grove is one thousand five hundred miles 
distant from South-eastern Alaska, and two 
thousand five hundred miles away, by pres- 
ent routes of travel, from South-western 
Alaska. Then the resources and character 
of the two countries are different. Oregon is 
largely agricultural, while Alaska has very 
httle agricultural interests. 

As the object of an' industrial training is 
to enable the boy, upon arriving at manhood, 
to earn a support that will sustain his family 
ill a civilized way, it is important to train him 
to utilize the resources of his own country. 

The resources of Alaska, in addition to 
her fur-bearing animals, are her vast supply 
of fish and great forests. 

Therefore the training school of her chil- 
dren should be on the coast, where they can 
be taught navigation and seamanship ; the 
handling of boats and sails; improved meth- 
ods of fishing and handling fish-nets; im- 
proved methods of salting, canning, and 
preparing fish for market; a saw-mill; a car- 
penter shop, cooper shop, boot and shoe 
shop, etc. A school where they can be 
taught both the theory aad practice under 



THE AMERICAN INDIAN PROBLEM. 



12- 



conditions similar to those they will meet 
w lion they undertake to support themselves. 

The need of sucli a school is urgent. 

A new era is opening for Alaska. Two 
years ago gold mines were opened about 
one hundred and sixty miles north-east of 
iSitka. and the mining village of Juneau was 
established. From these mines $150,000 
worth of gold dust was taken last season. 
Rich discoveries were also reported in the 
valley of the Upper Yukon River. These 
reports have considtrable interest in the 
mining regions of Arizona and the Pacific 
coast, and hundreds have, within the past 
few months, gone to Alaska. 

As a mining excitement first opened Cal- 
ifornia, Colorado, and Montana to settlement, 
so the present movement may be the com- 
mencement of the development of Alaska. 
That development lias already commenced. 
In addition to the quartz-mills and mining 
interests, trading-posts have been established 
at a number of native villages. The North- 
west Trading Company has established ex- 
tensive Avorks at Killisnoo for the manufact- 
ure of fish-oil. Four salmon canneries have 
been established at diflierent points, and 
several fisheries at others. Extensive cod- 
fisheries are in operation at tlie banks, off 
of the Shumagin Islands, and saw-mills are 



running at Sitka, Roberts, Klawack, and 
Jackson. 

These changes again bring up the ques- 
tion of education. Shall the native popula- 
tion be left, as in the past, to produce, under 
the encroachments of the incoming whites, a 
new crop of costly, bloody, and cruel Indian 
wars, or shall they be so educated tliat they 
will become useful factors in the new devoi- 
opment? The native races are partially 
civilized, industrious, anxious for an educa- 
tion, readily adopt tlie ways of the whites, 
and, with the advantages of schools, will 
quickly, to all intents and purposes, become 
citizens. To accomplish this, requires the 
sj'mpathy and co-operation of the friends of 
education throughout the country. 

As they feel ashamed that any large sec- 
tion of their land should be left without 
educational privileges — that Alaska should 
be worse off than when under Russia, the 
United States having failed to continue tlie 
schools that for many years were sustained 
by the Russian Government — let them show 
their interest in a stibstantial way by writing 
to the member of Congress from their dis- 
trict, asking him to use his influence in pro- 
curing an appropriation for the establishment 
of common schools in various sections of Alas- 
ka and an industrial training-school at Sitka. 



On motion of Gen. T. J. Morgan, of Potsdam, N. Y., the National 
Education Assembly in 1883 adopted the following : 



Ri^solved, That we recognize witli profound 
gratitude to God the cheering progress that 
marks the efforts to civihze the American 
Indians ; that we see in this an unanswer- 
able argument in favor of the continuance 
on the part of the government of the so- 
called peace policy; that we urge upon 
Congress the enlargement of the work al- 
ready in progress, until adequate provision 
shall be made for the systematic education 
of all Indians of proper school age ; that 
we specially urge the importance of appro- 



priation of money for general education in 
Alaska and for the establishment of an in- 
dustrial and normal school at Sitka; that we 
pledge ourselves, and call upon all philan- 
thropists, not only to aid the government ni 
this great work, but to do all that can be 
done, privately and publicly, to carry 
forward this great enterprise, until the 
American Indians become American citizens, 
with individual riglits of property and suf- 
frage and individual responsibilities and 
duties. 



The following letters were received at the Assembly : 



timent shall be created that wiU result in 
such action as will benefit, not only the In- 
dian, but the nation. 



Hon. Hiram Price, Commissioner of In- 
dian Affairs, Washington, in a letter of re- 
gret, addressed to Dr. Haetzell, that he 
could not attend, says : 

I hope you may be able to set in motion 
waves of influence, mighty and resistless as Hon. Wm. P. Welcker, Superintendent 
the waves of old ocean, on whose margin Public Instruction, Cal., says : 
you stand, that shall reach the hearts of the It seems to me that all Indians, not now 
people and the Churches, until a public sen- I civilized, should be broken up as tribes and 



138 



CHRISTIAN EDU0AT0B8 IN COTTNGIL. 



dispersed by families throughout the United 
States. We should abandon the flclion of 
tlieir being quad nations, and the folly of 
treating with them as such. We should not 
sever household ties ; but should tal\e fami- 
lies consisting of parents and minor children 
and settle them among the wliites. They 
should receive for a temporary period, not 
longer than absolutely necessary, whatever 
assistance shall be found indispensable to 
their education and to assist in their support. 
After that period tliey should be left to take 
care of themselves like other American 
citizens. Being Americans, they are entitled 
to all the privileges of citizens, and should 
assume all the responsibilities and be re- 
quired to perform all the duties of such. 



Hon. Cornelius Hedges, Superintendent 
Public Instruction, Montana, writes : 

As to the Indians, we have seen much 
of them. There has been little honest, 
intelligent effort made yet to improve the 
Indian. There seems most promise in the 
direction of educating the children. But, 
when educated, they are lost if sent back 
among the savage remnant. 

Work must be done along the whole line. 



Something must be done among the old ones. 
Those of fighting age I would have taken 
into the military service, and each one paid 
the same as white soldiers, who could mostly 
be returned to useful life. For all frontier 
service I would use only Indians. Those 
not thus eraplo3^ed should be given land in 
severalty, and taught how to make their own 
living out of it. Tlie moneys allowed as 
consideration for their land title should be 
funded, and only the interest allowed for 
education. Indians should be taught and 
made to work. Feeding them at agencies, 
in idleness and vice, is foolish and cruel 
kindness. We should like to see such an 
Indian fighter as Gen. Crook made Indian 
Commissioner. He has succeeded better 
than any one I know of in controlling and 
gaining the respect and confidence of the 
Indians. Promiscuous kindness is as de- 
moralizing as promiscuous cruelty. It needs 
a strong, brave, steady, honest, open, and 
firm nature to deal with tlie Indian. If, in 
addition to his present military powers, he 
could have all the civil powers of Indian 
Commissioner, and Congress would support 
him in what he would recommend, I beheve 
in ten years he would accomplish more thau 
has been done iu the past hundred years. 



VII. THE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



1. THE UTAH PROBLEM. 



EEV. A. J. KYNETT, D.D., PHILADELPHIA. 



AMONG- the burning questions demanding 
the imperative attention of this Educa- 
tional Convention is 

The Utah Problem. 

It is one of the marvels of our history 
that such a question should, in so short a 
time, grow to such proportions. 

Born of folly and fraud, nurtured by igno- 
rance and superstition, clothed in the guise of 
religion, yet ever ministering to lawlessness 
and lust, Mormonism has, within the life- 
time of young men, fastened itself upon the 
fairest of our central Territories, diffused its 
poison among those around it, and challenges, 
to-day, the united efforts of all our educational 
and missionary agencies, and the wisdom and 
skill of our best statesmen, and defies the 
power of the Federal government. 

At its birth, in 1830, it seemed only an in- 
nocent and sickly superstition, and was 
gently carried, a year later, upon the little 
tide of emigration from "Western New York 
into Northern Ohio. Here, in seven years, it 
grew to such a bad childhood, that it was driv- 
en, as with a scourge, into Far West Missouri. 
Refused a resting-place tiiere, it returned, 
in 1838, to the east bank of the Mississippi, 
in Illinois, where, at the head of the lower 
rapids, upon a beautiful plain, it built for 
itself the city of Nauvoo. 

Any system of religion that vs^as not also a 
system of crime might have found here a safe 
and congenial home, but Mormonism, in the 
course of another seven years, had so nur- 
tured and practiced crimes against society, 
that its neighbors rose up against it, and its 
chief propliet, Joseph Smith, was imprisoned 
and slain, and under the guidance of his 
lamous and infamous successor, Brigham 
Young, it sought a more congenial home 
within the territory of our sister republic, 
Mexico, beyond the reach of the civilization 
and laws which had every-where refused 
it protection. But Divine Providence did 
not propose to leave the solution of this 
problem to another and a weaker people, 
and so, the year following the migration 
9 



to Utah that Territory, included with others 
of the South-west, was ceded, in 1848, to the 
United States, and Brigham Young and liis 
followers found themselves again under 
the government from which they had fled 
and against which they had never ceased to 
rebel. 

So the problem still confronts us. So 
far from being solved it has grown in magni- 
tude, increased in complexity, and stands 
ready, with new expedieuis, to come as 
new revelations, to meet any possible 
emergency. At the first recognizing and 
preserving the family, which lies at the 
foundation of our Christian civilization, in 
1843, a new revelation to its prophet, 
Joseph Smith, gave it polygamy. If the people 
of the United States wish to know what this 
means let them study the results of polyg- 
amy in the genealogies of olden time — 
of Esau, with his three wives, for instance — 
and then speculate, in a mathematical way, 
upon the results to follow in Utah, as in our 
centenary year, thirty years after his migra- 
tion, Brigham Young might be seen with his 
seventeen wives, fifty-six children, and two 
million dollars' property. 

This system sends out its emissaries by 
the hundreds, and by fraud and false 
pretense gathers its thousands of deluded 
votaries from among the ignorant and 
superstitious of this country and of Europe, 
and in its distant mountain home lays upon 
their persons and property the iron hand of 
its priestly despotism, multiplies them by 
polygamous marriages, scatters them through 
Utah and adjoining territories, until the 
handful that found their path to the wilder- 
ness, less than twoscore years ago, have 
become a multitude of nearly two hundred 
thousand, whose deceivers and oppressors 
snap their fingers in the faces of civilization 
and law, and insultingly inquire, " What are 
you going to do about it :?" 

Ay 1 That's the question to be considered 
by the fifty millions of free people wliose 
moral sense is outraged and whose expressed 
will is defied by this modern abomination. 



130 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



What are you going to do about it ? 
I suggest: 

1. Let the recruiting business be stopped. Let 
the policy of President Hayes be revived 
and earnestly applied at the sources of 
supply in Europe. He directed our rep- 
resentatives in foreign countries to notify the 
governments abroad of the character of this 
S3rstem, and of its unfriendliness toward the 
government and laws of the United States, 
and that the suppression of such emigration 
was to be desired. 

I do not know why President Hayes's 
policy has not been followed, but I do know 
thnt Mormon emissaries go abroad by hun- 
dreds, and that Mormon emigrants arrive by 
shiploads, and are sent by rail to Utah. 

Our several State governments at home 
might profitably consider what could be done 
to protect their own citizens against a system 
the character of which is so well defined. 

2. Let the laws against polygamy be enforced^ 



and amended and enforced, until every device 
for escape is closed, and violators of law are 
made to suffer the consequences. 

3. Let missionary agents be strengthened and 
multiplied, not only in our own English lan- 
guage, but in the mother-tongue of the thou- 
sands there from the Old World. 

Of a total male population over twenty- 
one years old, in 1882, of 32,113, 18,283 — 
much more than half — were of foreign 
birth. 

4. Let the children of Utah he gathered into 
schools — into our free mission schools — as 
rapidly as possible, and into non-Mormon 
government schools as rapidly as they can be 
provided under a system of enforced educa- 
tion by the authority of the government of 
the United States. And I should hope that 
with the application of suggestions like 
these, and others that have bee n made by 
other gentlemen to-night, the Utah problem 
might be solved in the next half century. 



2. MORMONISM: EFFORTS OF CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 



KET. HENRY KENDALL, D.D., 

Secretary of Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church. 



THAT Mormonism, or, as the Mormons 
themselves call it, " The Church of the 
Latter-Day Saints," with its 150,000 or 
200,000 adherents in Utah and the neighbor- 
ing States and Territories, should exist in 
this nineteenth century, and in the heart of 
the territory of the United States, is one of 
the wonders of the age. 

When we look at it in the character or in 
the abilities of its founders, in the light of its 
doctrines and its practices, the wonder does 
not grow less but rather greater. That so- 
called Church has no respectable defender, 
outside of itself, in all the world. It has not 
the sympathy of a single nominal Church 
in Christendom, and yet it continues and 
prospers in spite of all predictions to the 
contrary, and was never stronger nor more 
hopeful than to-day. 

In the town of Manchester, Ontario Coim- 
ty. New York, in the year 1830, this Church 
was formed. Its founder, Joseph Smith, an 
idle, vicious, and hardly reputable young man, 
who was accustomed to associate with 
fortune-tellers, and who laid claim to the 
power of second-sight, by means of the 
crotched witch-hazel and a stone, supposed 
to have like magical power, came at length 
to claim superhuman and prophetic powers. 
He claimed to have had it revealed to him 
that, buried in the earth, near at hand, w.is 
a record, inscribed upon gold plates, which 



he only could read and interpret, and that he 
had transcribed the same, and hence a book 
was printed in Palmyra, New York, entitled 
"The Book of Mormon, an account written 
by the hand of Moroni, upon plates taken 
from the plates of Napiii. By Joseph Smith, 
Jr., author and proprietor." 

Tliere is the best historical evidence that 
the substance of this book was written, as a 
kind of pastime, by a Congregational clergy- 
man, in Pennsylvania, by the name of 
Spaulding, without any thought on the part 
of the author to palm it off upon the world as 
a divine revelation ; but, after his death, 
others, as unscrupulous as Smith himself, 
Joined him, and the manuscript was obtained 
and with we know not how many modifica- 
tions it became " The Book of Mormon," 
which is accepted by the Mormons as a new 
revelation from heaven. The Church of 
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was 
organized in Apr\l, 1830. But, in the neigh- 
borhood of its organization, it was esteemed ^ 
nothing more than a nine days' wonder. A 
few curious people used to visit the place, to 
see the " prophet," the new bible, and to hear 
what its advocates would say. But it made 
no sensible impression on the intelligent 
Christian people of Western New York. 

Hence, perhaps in 1831, it was revealed to 
them to move their head-quarters to Kirtland, 
Ohio. Here they remained for nearly or 



THE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



181 



quite seven years. Then came a collapse in 
the financial affairs of ihe concern. A bank, 
wJiich Smith had organized, and of which he 
hud become presidcnr, tailed in such a way- 
thai lie was obliged to Mee to escape being 
arrested for fraud. Tlie community con- 
sidered itself outraged, and rose up against 
the Mormons, not with armed resistance, 
but with sucli outspoken disgust and abhor- 
rence that most of Ihe Mormons followed 
their prophet and gathei'ed next in tiie State 
of Missouri. But here the}"^ were so poor and 
hnvless that they were accused of thefts and 
larcenies till the people rose up in ai-med re- 
sistance and drove them out of the State. 
The}' then gathered in Illinois and established 
the city of Nauvoo. Here, again, they 
became obnoxious to the surrounding com- 
munity and came in conflict with them. 
The State militia was called out to enforce 
the law. The Mormons armed themselves 
for resistance. Joseph Smith and his 
brother, Hiram at length surrendered to the 
civil authorities, and were lodged in jail. 
Baton the same evening, the 27th of May, 
1844, the mob surrounded the jail and made 
an assault on it, and both Joseph and Hiram 
Smitli were killed. 

It became impossible for the Mormons, 
with their peculiar practices and doctrines, 
to live peaceably in any settled community 
at the West, and another movement became 
necessary. Brigham Young was chosen to 
fill the place of Joseph Smith, and with 
characteristic skill organized the scattered 
Mormons, to the number of about 16,000, 
and began the pilgrimage to the Salt Lake 
Valley, which was a journej- of several 
months. The Territory of Utah was organ- 
ized in 1850, and Brigham Young was 
appointed its first governor. And as gov- 
ernor, or as head of the Church, he was 
subsiautially governor of the Territory as 
long as he lived, as John Taylor is now. 

i'rora that time to this Mormonism in Utah 
lias prospered and grown strong. 

What has been the secret of its prosperity 
and power ? 

1. The Consummate Ability of Brigham Young. 

Success often depends on good beginnings. 
Many good projects promise well, but never 
succeed, because they seem never to have 
had a good start. Brigham Young saved 
Mormonism from utter defeat and early ex- 
tinction. Mormonism failed in New York, 
the State of its birth. It failed in Ohio. 
It failed in Missouri. It failed iu Illinois. 
Then Joseph Smith was slaiu, and then his 
followers were dispersed and scattered 
abroad. It always failed under the leader- 
ship of Smith. It could not have survived 
another failure. At this juncture Brigham 
Young came to the presidencj', and he 
brought to the administration of its affairs 
indomitable courage and great practical good 



sense. Tlie resolution to gather up these 
poor people and go to Salt Lake Valkiv, 
the al;ility to silence aU opposition to sro 
wild a scheme, to inspire the requisite 
courage for so long and perilous a journey 
across well-known deserts, through hosts of 
hostile savages, with small supplies to start 
with and no supplies on the way, and tlu-u 
through many weary months to successfully 
conduct the campaign, with women and 
children and old people, through winter and 
summer, is a wonderful fact in history, ami 
shows the pluck and capacity of a nia.^t- r 
mind. Practically, Brigham Young inauc 
few mistakes, and when he did, no one s:iw 
them sooner than himself, and none cnii.d 
change his attitude more adroitly and succv^. - 
fully than he. He never started a frauduleni 
bank, as Smith did, at Kirtlaiid, Ohio, ll.-; 
did not pull down a printer's office and de- 
stroy his press, as Smith did, at Nauvoo; 
and if he did bring his people almost into 
collision with the United States government 
and its troops, as he did at an early day in 
Utah, he was skillful enough to avoid the 
collision and yet retain the respect of his 
followers; and as to collision with the 2oeopk^ 
as Smith had in Missouri and Illinois, Brig- 
ham Young was very wise to remove his 
lorces to a place where there could be no 
surrounding people to collide with. 

When, nineteen years ago, I asked Brig- 
ham Young, in his own office in Salt Lake 
City, if he would have any objection to our 
Board sending a missionary to Salt Lake 
City, he mildly replied' that he should have 
no objection whatever, but should rather like 
it, for, he said, he should like to have his 
young people know what the other denomi- 
nations believed. I regarded his reply as 
signifying that he was so strong that he 
had nothing to fear from any Missionar.y 
Boards; but the two United States Judges in 
the Territory at the time thought that it was 
rather because he felt weak, for General 
Conner's guns at Fort Douglas, a mile away, 
were trained on his houses. And when, not 
a week later, a provost-marshal's office was 
opened in ^tlie City of the Saints, greatly to 
the disgust of the Mormons, and their niili- 
taiy forces were called out, and (general 
Conner sent word to him that at the lirst 
drop of blood shed by them he would blow 
Brigham Young's head-quarters into dust, 
his soldiers melted away and disappeared 
like dew before the rising sun. Brave as he 
vvas to advance, he was not less skillfnl to 
beat a retreat when policy demanded it. 

Brigham Young was a born leader of rncn. 
While he had only an ordinary or comni'Di- 
school educaiion, he was gifted with a species 
of rough oratory that was fitted to be very 
successful with such a people as he was 
chosen to lead. Read his published sermons, 
and you will find he leaves questifnis of 
theology mostly to others. He grapples wi th 



133 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



practical matters, he discourses of cattle, of 
crops, of fences, of irrigation, and gives tlie 
wisest of counsels as to tlie physical comfort 
and welfare of the people. His exhortations 
are most forcible, and clothed in his lan- 
guage they had the force of command. 
In I hose discourses it is apparent, too, that 
his ears were not closed against the mur- 
murings of discontent, and on such occasions 
he would lash his hearers with the bitterest 
invective and most biting sarcasm, and over- 
whelm the malcontents with vituperation at 
one time, and at another with ridicule ; vul- 
gar even to indecency, he gave his hearers 
no peace till he was already master of the 
field. 

2. Another Source of their Strength and Pros- 
perity is their Thorough Organization. 
We cannot but admit that John Wesley 
was a great organizer. His plans for work 
for all, and a place for all to work, and his 
system of class-meetings for the careful 
oversight of all the members in his churches, 
and their development of Christian character, 
were most admirable. We are apt to give 
great credit to the remarkable oversight 
wliich the Roman Cathohc Church exercises 
over ail its members. It is very thorough. 
]*]very man, woman, and child is watched 
over, all their benevolent contributions are 
watched over, and the grace of giving is 
pressed with great thoroughness and persist- 
ence, and poor as many of their people are — 
day-laborers and servant-girls — put to shame 
finy of our Protestant Churches in the aggre- 
gate of their gifts. But neither the Meth- 
odists nor the Roman Catholics can compare 
with the Mormons in the completeness of 
their oversight of their members. As a 
writer has recently said: "The Mormon 
population reaches only 125,000. But over 
this number, to discipline and direct them 
in all thmgs both temporal and spiritual, 
are set more than 22,000 church officials, 
such as a president, 2 counselors, 12 apos- 
tles, 60 pati'iarchs, whose business it is to 
bless at $2 a head ; 25 presidents of ' Stakes 
ofZion,' 'or fields or districts;' 275 bishops, 
3,045 high-priests, 11,545 elders, of whom 
every one can preach, baptize, lay on hands 
for the reception of the Holy Ghost, and 
anoint for the healing of the sick; 1,286 
priests, 1,576 teachers, and 4,100 deacons. 
Here is the strength of Mormonisrn, in the 
number of ofiSce-holders for which it provides 
in the rigid system of subordination from 
top to bottom." 

As Joseph Cook says: " Every j^/i/i man 
is an officer, and from the highest to the 
lowest every one is liable to promotion if his 
superior falls out, and so much the more 
sure of promotion as he is faithful to the 
tenets, traditions, and practices of the Mor- 
mon Church. Not a Mormon can step into 
one of our chapels on the Sabbath or send 



his child to one of our week-day schools or 
Sunday-schools without being liable to re- 
proof from a Mormon official ; and if lie per- 
severes, lie falls under suspicion, and is 
watched more carefully; and if he finally 
ventures, under the stress of liis convictions, 
to abandon the Mormons, he knows he does 
it at the risk of losing caste or social posi- 
tion, as surely as he would in India, and 
suffers the withdrawal of all business from 
him so far as lies in the power of the Mor- 
mon Chu'ch." 

One of the marvels of this feature of the 
case is how a few men, without experience 
in public affairs, without any extensive read- 
ing, should have been able to originate a 
system of oversight or espionage, a system 
so admirable in all its practical details for 
growth and development, and almost at the 
first draft. But in thifi, as in all the initial 
facts of Mormon history, the hand of Brig- 
ham Young is conspicuous. His consummate 
organizing capacity, exercising itself with 
the masterly outhne of a great movement, 
and in all the minor details, shows how for- 
tunate it was for the Mormons when he 
came to the front. The compacted unity of 
the whole scheme, and the harmony of all 
the parts, the ecclesiastical and secular re- 
ligion, trade, and commerce all combined, 
are an illustration of his wisdom and the 
perfection of the organization of the system. 

3. Another Element of the Strength and Pros- 
perity of tlie System is the Exclusion of 
its Adherents from the Society of the Best 
of the World. 
They separated themselves from the rest 
of the world when they went to Salt Lake 
City, or Salt Lake Valley. Hundreds of 
miles intervened between themselves and 
any other people, except wild savages. 
IiT all their bounds there were no churches 
but Mormon churches, no people bttt Mor- 
mon people. Whatever might be said about 
other people, about their beliefs or prac- 
tices, there were none of them there to say 
it was not true, or give the lie to Mormon 
utterances by word of mouth or by their 
deeds. Is it any wonder, then, that the 
children of Mormons shotild grow up believ- 
ing that other Christian people are idolaters, 
as some children of Mormons are said to do 
at the present time ? This separation was a 
great element of strengtli in the formative 
period of the Mormon system. There was 
no dissent because there were no dissenters, 
and, with the exception of two or three mer- 
chants in Salt Lake City, there were none to 
call in question the absolute certainty of 
their faith for the first twenty years of their 
residence in Utah. The children grew up in 
absolute ignorance of any other professing 
Christian people. In that time the system 
had become an accepted one, if there ever 
had been any doubters they were silent, and 



THE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



133 



whatever seemed essential to compactness 
had been adopted. But some of their re- 
ligious opinious and practices have contrib- 
uted greatl}"- to the cumpaciness, unity, and 
strength of the people, notably 

Polygamy. 

It has been remarked that no great sys- 
tem of false religion lias ever had any exten- 
sive prevalence that has not, at last, in some 
way, administered to • the lusts of men. 
Nothing could more effectually do this than 
the adoption of polygamy ; so Moiiammed 
saw, so the leadeis in the Mormon faith saw, 
and they saw it early. And afier what our 
Lord had said about it, and its positive con- 
demnation by him, it is most siu'prising that 
In this age of tlie world any people, especially 
claiming to be the people of God, could adopt 
or accept it. But polygamy has been of 
great service to the Mormons in keeping 
them distinct from all other people. When 
a governor or a merchant of non-Mormon 
faith took a wife to Utah, she had no social 
intercourse with the Mormon women or the 
Mormon women with her. Brigham Young 
was never known to take his seventeen 
wives and call to pay his respects to the 
Governor of the Territory and his wife. The 
Mormons have socially ostracized themselves 
from all the respectable society of the civ- 
ilized world. It is not to be supposed that 
they thought of this as a point to be reached, 
but nothing could more completelj' segregate 
the Mormons from the rest of the world than 
polygamy. 

In like manner, though not to the same 
extent, is another feature of their faith, 
which has in it all the elements of ancient 
Phariseeism. Mormonism claims that its 
adherents are the special favorites of heaven. 
They are the Latter-Day Saints. To them, 
in distinction from all other people, has a 
revelation from heaven been made ; to them 
alone has the ancient spirit of prophecy and 
the power of working miracles been restored. 
It offers its adherents all the best things of this 
world and the world to come. 

The Christian religion offers the glories of 
heaven to those that believe in Christ, but 
only as they leave all for Christ. Persecu- 
tions, and losses of all things earthly, and 
death itself, have been the lot of those who 
follow Christ. Even Paul could count all 
thintrs but loss for the excellency of the 
knowledge of Christ, and the only serious 
trouble with men in accepting the offers of 
salvation has been the necessary abandon- 
ment of the world for Christ. If men could 
pursue their cherished pleasures, if the de- 
nial of darling sins were not essential to the 
attainment of heavenly glory, it would not 
be hard to persuade men to become Chris- 
tians. But Mormonism promised to its fol- 
lowers the best things of earth and the 
highest seats in glory. The Latter-Day 



Saints are to fill all the earth. All the 
earthly governments are to crumble to pieces. 
The nations are corrupt, and must disappear, 
and the Mormons are to take possession of 
all the earth ; and the old tradition, which 
has not been abandoned, is that the center 
and imperial city is to be set up in tlie State 
of Missouri ! But the idea ti:at the Mor- 
mons are to have all tlie best positions, 
wealth, and honors, and pleasures, and dom- 
inate all the earth, is a pi-ominent article of 
their faith. Herein is their similarity to 
Mohammedanism, which is now said to have 
180,000,0110 adherents. Like the Moham- 
medans, they may have a pluralit}' of wives 
on tne earth, the more the better; and ihe 
more wives they have on earth the higher 
their place in heaven. If the lust of the 
flesh — abounding sensuality — and the lust of 
the ej-e, and the pride of life, are not pro- 
vided for in the system of Mormonism, with 
everlasting life, we do not see how they 
could be incorporated into any scheme. The 
Mormons are a praying people, above all 
others ; they are a very religious people in 
their way. But if a close examination does 
not reveal them as profane, and vulgar, and 
worldly, and licentious in the forms of 
polygamy, then those who have the best op- 
portunity to study their conduct have done 
them great injustice. 

Such a theory naturally engenders self- 
righteousness ; for if we can flatter our- 
selves that " we are not as other men," that 
we are superior to all other of God's pro- 
fessed children — the imdoubted inheritors 
of all that is good in this world and the 
world to come, nothing more is necessary to 
make them righteous in their own eyes and 
to despise all other men. 

4. TJie Book of Mormon is an element of 
Poiver. 

The long-lived religions have their sacred 
books. "What would have become of the 
Christian religion but for the Bible? What 
would have become of Mohammedanism but 
for the Koran, or the old religions and super- 
stitions and idolatries of the Hindus but for 
their sacred books ? I do not put these 
books and the Koran on the same plane or 
to be compared with the Bible, but to afiSrin 
that a book which is claimed as divine — a 
book that can be seen and handled and read, 
that has laws and precepts, no matter how 
absurd — will outlive the forms of faith that 
have no such basis. And such religions are 
all more tenacious of life because we, as 
Christians, hold on to our Bible with so ranch 
tenacity. As we cling to it, so the Moham- 
medan clings to his book and the Hindu to 
his. If we have a book of laws, precepts 
which we claim to be a revelation from God, 
so the Mormons claim to have had another 
subsequent revelation from God. If we of 
the Church of God have had prophets and 



134 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



priesf s and apostles, wlio could work mira- 
cles, why should not they liave the same? 

It is in vain that you show such people 
how absurd are their revelations, how con- 
trary to history, how ii-reconcilable with 
facts ; they may not be able to meet you in 
tlie argument, but they have a book, a book 
from God, and Ihat tangible, visible symbol 
of their faith is a great power with them, as 
our Bible is with us. 

This is the system of Mormonism as it ex- 
ists in Utah. 

Perhaps it was never more vigorous or pros- 
perous than to-day. Perhaps never more 
missionaries went out through the civilized 
world to win and bring in converts than the 
present year. Perhaps the tithes were never 
paid more promptly than now. Perhaps 
there was never greater unity and compact- 
ness in the system than now; a hardy, 
thrifty people congregated in the cities and 
lar^e towns and spread over the valleys and 
out upon the foot-liills of the mountains that 
irurround the valleys of Utah, and even ex- 
tending into New Mexico, Arizona, and 
Idaho, are these misguided people. 

We used to say polygamy is the strength 
of the system; let Congress legislate against 
polygamy and it will be a death-blow to the 
system. Twenty years has the legal con- 
demnation against polygamy stood on the 
records of Congress, one polygamist has been 
convicted and imprisoned ; but the practice 
of polygamy, has never been checked a single 
iuftant. We used to say let the railroad pass 
through the Territory, let it be safe for the 
wives of polygamous husbands to speak out, 
and they will lift up their voices against the 
iniclean S3'-stem ; and yet when some Gentile 
women organized an effort against it, a mass- 
meeting of Mormon women, 2,000 strong, 
declared that " polygamy is as essential to 
woman's happiness as her salvation;" and 
o'le of the speakers said: '■! would not 
abandon polygamy to exchange with Queen 
Victoria and all her dependencies." 

But we must understand that in such ut- 
terances polygamous wives are speaking for 
themselves and their children, for if polyg- 
amy has not the divine sanction (it has not 
the legal humnn sanction) they are but con- 
cubines and their children illegitimate. So 
it has been said, " Let Brigham Young die 
and the system will fall to pieces; no other 
man in Utah has his capacity to command 
and control men;" and yet when he died his 
successor was chosen with scarcely a ripple 
of commotion, and things continue as they 
were. It was said, too, that " if we would 
send in missionaries and preach the truth, 
the imprisoned and priest-ridden slaves of 
the spiritual tyranny would break their 
shackles and accept the truth as it is in 
Jesus." Men have sickened of the tjn-anny, 
and liave broken awaj' from the thraldom of 
the priests, but instead of thronging to our 



Mission Cluirches, they, mostly, repudiate all 
Churches ; having become convinced of the 
hollowness of the Mormon system, ihey also 
repudiate all faiths and all Churches, and be- 
come open infidels. At length the govern- 
ment arose in its majesty and might and 
passed the Edmunds Bill, and we expected 
to see Mormonism shattered as when a shell 
falls on tlie deck of a merchantman, and the 
Mormons have gone on marrying and giving 
in marriage, only more abundandy. 

An anachronism, a colossal development 
of religious fanaticism, a mixture of Juda- 
ism, Mohammedanism, and Heathenism, 
defying the government of tlie United 
States and all the forces of Christianity, 
Mormonism still stands, in the heart and 
center of the territory of the United States, 
apparently as snfely environed and shut out 
from all outward attack as if the hills that 
surround the valleys of Utah were impassa- 
ble mountains. 

What of it 1 Settled in their own homes, 
pursuing peaceful pursuits, what concern is 
it to tlie Christian Church? Mainly this: 
If they, teachers and taught are deceivers 
and being deceived; if, claiming to be saints, 
they are the dupes of Satan ; if they are go- 
ing, and are leading their children, down to 
everhisting perdition, 125,000 or 150,000 in 
the midst of this Christian land, then it is 
tlie greatest possible concern to the Christian 
people of this land toknow what to do about it. 

We will not wholly despair of the influ- 
ences that have been mentioned. Railroads — 
the introduction of a Gentile population, so- 
called — may not have accomplished all we 
hoped for, but they have not been in vain ; a 
bold front and noisy defiance and vigorous 
defense of positions long held, are quite as 
much the devices of weakness as they are 
the evidences of strength. Let us not de- 
spair. The United States government may 
do something yet if it tries. It has never 
tried! But let us not despair. Growing de- 
fiance maj^ tit length, call out counter efforts 
that will avail. 

But one thing is certain. The Gospel will 
prevail against Mormonism. It is the power 
of God, to the pulling down of strongholds. 
All other things may fail. The preaching of 
the Gospel will not fail. 

But as we begin among the children in 
henthen lands, and reach through them to 
their parents, so must we do among the 
Mormons; and especially since it may be 
true, as many believe, that even tlie most 
ignorant and besotted heathens are more ac- 
cessible to religious influences than ihose 
who have known the words of life and per- 
verted them to their own destruction, so 
all the religious denominations that have 
undertaken Christian work in Utah and 
among the Mormons have attempted to 
reach the people by means of missionary 
teachers and Christian schools. 



THE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



135 



The Protestant Episcopal Cliurcli beg-an 
operations ia Utah in 1867, and its first prac- 
tical work was tlie establishment of schools. 
Bishop Tuttle and his helpers saw at once 
that the chief instrumentality for gaining a 
permanent Christian influence must be the 
education of the children, and the absence 
of any free school system, or the hope of 
one, rendered it an imperative necessity to 
make every available contribution for the 
supply of that want. 

The Episcopalians have 1 clergymen, 5 
churches, 395 communicants, 5 Sunday- 
schools, with 730 scholars, 5 schools, 25 
teacliers, 770 pupils, (4,400 from the begin- 
ning,) and a hospital which within ten years 
has received 3,000 patients. 

May 8, 1870, Rev. G. M. Peirce, the first 
Methodist preacher in Utah, arrived with 
his family at Salt Lake l3ity, and began the 
work of planting Methodism on Mormon soil. 
One week later he began his labors in Inde- 
pendence Hall. 

The Methodist Church opened its first 
mission school in Salt Lake City September 
20, 1870, with an enrollment of 28 pupils. 

Now the Methodists have 10 ministers, 6 
churches, with 189 members, 5 schools, 6 
teachers. 450 scholars. 

Tlie churches and mission stations under 
care of the Presbytery of Utah extend from 
Malad, Idaho, to St. George, in Southern 
Utah, a continuous line 450 miles long. 
There are 12 organized cliurchesand 33 mis- 
sion schools, under charge of 19 ministers 
and 53 teacliers. These churclies and 
schools are so grouped geographically as to 
furnish each minister with a circuit. 

In the winter of 1873-4 Prof. John M. 
Coyner, of Indianapolis, Indiana, spent a 
few days in Salt Lake City, on his way to 
the Pacific coast. While in the city he made 
the acquaintance of Rev. Josiah Welch, pas- 
tor of tiie Presbyterian Church, and from 
him learned the religious and educational 
status of the Territory. They botli agreed 
that Utah furnished a remarkable field for 
future educational enterprise, and that the 
Presbyterian Church should' be engaged in 
this important work ; and when they parted, 
as Prof. Coyner left for San Francisco, he 
said to Mr. Welch : 

" When you get ready to inaugurate your 
educational work, let me know, and, God 
willing, I will aid you." 

But neither one expected events to develop 
so rapidly. At that time only a lot was pur- 
chased, iDut not paid for. But in less than 
twelve months a large church was erected, 
with basement rooms ; and, true to previous 
agreement. Prof. Coyner had been invited 
to, and had accepted, the superintendency of 



the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute, which 
was opened in the basement on April 12, 1875. 
The Presbyterians have 310 members, 12 
churches, 34 schools with 2,000 scholars, 
and 1,800 in Suudaj'-schools. Real estate 
is owned in 23 towns, worth $97,000, and 
the annual cost of churches and schools 
is $36,000. 

THE NEW WEST EDUCATION COMMISSION. 

This society of Christian pliilantiiropists 
was organized in Chicago about two years 
ago. It looks to the Congregational Churches 
of the country for its constituency. 

The Congregationalists have two churches, 
with 180 members; 7 ministers occupying 
11 points; 11 Sunday-schools, with upward 
of 500 scholars ; an academy, and 15 free 
schools, with 23 teachers and 530 scholars; 
church and school property, costing some 
$75,000. and all maintained at an annual ex- 
pense of $18,000. 

The Baptists have a good beginning in 
Ogden, and are now building a fine church 
edifice in Salt Lake City. 

In the past fifteen years, and mainly 
within half that period, including only what 
relates to the five Protestant denominations, 
we have 27 churches, 41 ministers, 1,100 com- 
municants, 50 Sunday-schools, 3,430 scholars. 
All this is scattered over 50 of the principal 
towns. The total cost of church and school 
property is not less than $425,000, and the 
yearly expense of carrying on these Chris- 
tian institutions, $140,000. 

Thesei schools are all in realit}'', though not 
obtrusively. Christian schools. All their 
teachers are really missionaries, and thej^ do 
much in the way of personal missioviary 
labor, not in the schools only, but in Sunday- 
schools and from house to house. Moreover, 
the schools are located as to be in reach of 
some one of the missionaries, and usually 
constitute one of his mission stations where 
regularly, at stated intervals, he preaches 
the Gospel. Thus the preachers and the 
teachers constitute one consecrated and har- 
monious band engaged in undermining the 
whole system of Mormonism. Looking at its 
elements of strength we must expect a long, 
hard struggle ; but looking at the weapons of 
our warfare and the great Captain of our 
salvation, who is God over all, blessed for 
evermore, we will not despair. Victory is 
certain at last, and when the last result is put 
on final record, those who liave contributed 
to it by prayer, by pecuniary benefactions, by 
personal labors, will have abundant occasion 
to rejoice and to thank God that they were 
counted worthy to share in such a glorious 
triumph of the truth, to the glory of our 
common Lord. 



136 



GHBISTIAJS' EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



3. DISLOYALTY OF MORMONS, AND EDUCATION IN UTAH. 



PROF. J. M. COYNER, PH.D., 

Bait Lake Collegiate Institute, Utah. 



HE who, through ignorance, carelessness, or 
prejudice, misleads mankind in regard to 
any subject that involves obligation and con- 
sequent duty, must be held, to a greater or 
less degree, responsible for the evil influence 
thus exerted. He wlio iutentionahy does the 
same commits a crime both against the laws 
of God and the laws of society. The writer 
of this paper realizes the truth of tliese 
propositions, and while he holds himself re- 
sponsible for the statements he makes, he 
professes to be well guarded iu these state- 
ments. 

Every citizen of Utah who writes or 
speaks upon the Mormon question sliould 
weigh carefully every argument presented 
and examine well every expression used, 
lest he appear to be influenced by prejudice 
or prompted by selfish motive. 

He should remember that he is dealing 
with a national subject of great moral im- 
portance, and if his position enables him to 
have any influence in molding public opinion 
he should see to it that the impressions made 
are on the side of individual rights and pub- 
lic virtue. 

Mormonism is no longer a local question. 
It has assumed great national importance, 
and must enter largely into the future poli- 
tics of our country. 

Some of us remember the expression of 
former daj^s, " There is a negro in the na- 
tional wood-pile," and we also remember 
what it cost to get that negro out. 

There is now most assuredly a Mormon in 
the mountain canyon, and it requires more 
than "human ken " to say what it will cost 
to get him out; for there can no more be 
harmony between Utah Mormonism and 
American Republicanism than there could be 
in former days harmony between slavery and 
liberty. 

One or the other must go to the wall. 
And there must be a continued strife while 
the two exist in our commonwealth. 

The most dangerous element of the Mor- 
mon pov/er is not its polygamy ; is not the 
fact that it destroys the unified home and 
ignores individual manhood ; is not that it 
reduces woman to the level of the slave, and 
robs her of all that makes her man's co- 
equal ; is not that it turns the hands of the 
clock of tlie world's morality back on the dial 
of time for four thousand j^ears, and would en- 
graft on the nineteenth century the barba- 
rism of the Darlv Ages. But the element that 
is the tap-root of this upas-tree, and that 



gives life to every branch and leaf of the 
system, is its disloyalty. 

Let it be distinctly understood that the 
Mormon power is not a Church in any true 
sense of the term. It is a political associa- 
tion ; an organized government, a kingdom 
with a crowned king, and its subjects are so 
bound by oaths of allegiance to that king 
that no man that is a faithful Mormon can 
be loyal to the government of the United 
States. 

The fundamental idea of the Mormon doc- 
trine is that God revealed to Joseph Smith 
that through him Christ's temporal kingdom 
was to be estabhshed on earth ; that to the 
Latter-Day Saints was to be given the 
power to finally rule all the nations of the 
world ; that the Mormon power is the 
stone cut out of the mountain that will fin- 
allj' crush all other principalities and powers. 
And history shows that, from the first organ- 
ization of the Mormons in Ohio, they have 
endeavored to carry out the idea that they 
are the Lord's people, and every thing they 
could appropriate to their use belonged to 
them, for " The earth is the Lord's and the 
fullness thereof," and what belongs to the 
Lord belongs also to his saints. 

With this fundamental idea always in 
mind the Mormon hierarchy has establislied 
one of tlie most thoroughly organized sys- 
tems of government that has ever existed. 
In fact, Europe to-day presents no example 
of a despotism more complete, of an absolute 
monarchy more thoroughly organized, than 
that of the so-called Latter-Day Saints. 

It is true that most of this organization lies 
deep hidden in the secret mysteries of the En- 
dowment-liouse, and is not revealed even to 
the masses of the rank and file ; they being 
taught that " obedience is better than knowl- 
edge." But this verj"- secresy lends a binding 
influence, and makes the despotism the more 
complete. The American people should quick- 
ly comprehend the fact that the Mormon pow- 
er is not a Church in anj'- sense of the term. 
It is a political organization that, under the 
cloak of religion, is endeavoring to conceal its 
true character until, vampyx-e-like, it can suck 
the life-blood of the nation. 

As a citizen of Utah, tlie writer has for 
nearly ten years watched the course of 
events. He has listened to scores of their 
speakers in Tabernacle, Assemby Hall, and 
ward meeting-house. He has mingled with 
the masses, and learned from various untold 
sources much that has surprised him, and 



THE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



137 



has convinced liim that there is a power, a 
purpose, a vitality, and a national danger 
connected wich the Mormon hierarchy that 
tlie people in general do not comprehend. 

This is not said in the spirit of persecution. 
No rightly disposed person wishes to perse- 
cute the Latter-Day Saints for their religious 
views. 

They have equal rights to worship God ac- 
cording to the impulses of their own con- 
sciences. But religious liberty is not polit- 
ical license, and when the\% under the cloak 
of religious belief, organize a political associa- 
tion whose purpose is to overthrow our na- 
tional polity — when, in carrying out their 
so-called religious belief, they violate law both 
human and divine, and trample upon consti- 
tutional enactments as well as the recognized 
rights of civilized society — it is not only the 
privilege, but the duty, of every American 
citizen to earnestly oppose them. 

While Utah remains a Territory, its control 
is largely in the hands of the general govern- 
ment; for while States are much the same as 
children who have come to a legal age and 
can vote and act for themselves, Territories 
are minors, political wards to be cared for by 
the general government. The Mormon hier- 
archy feel their relation in tliis respect, and 
chafe under it. The control of the United 
States is a bitter medicine that they are com- 
pelled to take ; though they are always will- 
ing to bribe the nurse not to administer tiie 
dose that the physician has prescribed. 

In view of this fact an important part of 
their plan is to have Utah admitted as a 
State. This done, a grand step would be tak- 
en to secure tlie iuhillment of their designs. 
Then the capital of tlie Mormon Kingdom 
would be practically free from the control of 
the United States. Then we would liave no 
loyal governor to absolutely veto bad bills, 
no loyal secretary of this Territory or United 
States marshal to protect us from wrong, or 
loyal Judges to see tliat we have justice done. 
All would then be under the control of the 
despotic rule of a despotic so-called priest- 
hood. Then would come the time referred to 
by Brigham Young, Jr., when speaking in 
the great tabernacle, he said : " If I had my 
own way I would say to every Gentile in this 
territory, you get out of here or take the con- 
sequences," and it is coming to this. 

it is the opinion of the loyal citizens of 
Utah, that f she is ever admitted as a State 
under Mormon control, sucli admission will 
so fasten tlie political and moral cancer upon 
the body politic that it can only be removed 
as was its twin sister — Slavery. We, there- 
fore, earnestly appeal to the educated, think- 
ing, loyal minds of our country to see to it 
that by no trick of party demagogisin shall 
there ever be admitted into the sisterhood of 
States one controlled by the Mormon power. 
For if one such State should be admitted, and 
the precedent be thus established, they would, 



by their system of organization, in a few years 
capture at least half a dozen of the future 
States of these mountain regions, and thus 
have the balance of power in our govern- 
ment. It is true that the system of moralitj^ 
as taught and practiced by the Latter-Day 
Saints is a dangerous one, and one that will 
sap the foundation of any government found- 
ed as ours is. 

Yet it is not the province of the nation to 
legislate on purely moral questions. But we 
emphasize the position already taken, that 
Murmonism must be regarded as a political, 
and not a religious, institution. 

But it may be asked, is not the legislation 
already enacted sufficient to control the evil? 
We answer No. Indeed, every step taken 
tlius far by the government has strengthened 
the Mormon power. Even the Edmunds 
Bill is not an exception. For wliile the polyg- 
amists are disfranchised, they, through their 
organization, have such control over the 
masses that they can secure tlie election by 
large majority, and every one thus disfran- 
chised holds himself up in his community as 
an example of persecution for righteousness' 
sake. What, then, should be done ? 

1. Take from the Mormon hierarchy every 
vestige of power, both territorial and muni- 
cipal. Place them in a position that they 
cannot wield their despotic lash over their 
subjects. Give in this way the rising genera- 
tion an opportunity to become American 
freemen ; for there are many thousands who 
would gladly assert tlieir freedom if it was 
not for fear of the terrible lash of the priest- 
hood. And if such were placed in a position 
where there would be a good hope of success, 
they would arise in their might and either 
overthrow this system or compel it to take 
its proper place as a Church of relieious be- 
lief. 

Congress has the power to control the Ter- 
ritories as she thinks best. Let lier then as- 
sume the responsibility. Let her make such 
laws in regard to marriage as will break up 
that moral pest-house of disloyalty, the En- 
dowment-house. 

Let her appoint a legislative commission 
with such constitutional powers as will com- 
pel in this Territory the same obedience to laws 
as elsewliere, and that will give an oppor- 
tunity for the loyal element of the people to 
be the controlling power. 

2. Let the government step forward, and 
assume the education of " Utali's best crop." 
Utah is the only part of the United States, 
except Alaska, that has not a public-school 
sj'stem. There are two classes of schools in 
Utah — those connected with the hve religious 
churches. Episcopal, Catholic, Methodist, 
Presbyterian, and Congregational, and the 
Mormon schools. The former are called mis- 
sion schools, and are supported partl}^ by tu- 
ition and partly by funds from the Mission 
Societies in the East. The number of these 



138 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



schools is about 65, with au enrollment of 
over five thousand children. These schools 
are doing a good work, but are not aided by 
any territorial money or government patron- 
age. 

The Mormons liave a school-house in every 
ward. In Salt Lake City there are 21 such 
liouses, and several hundred through tiie Ter- 
ritory. These buildings are erected and kept 
lip by a general tax levied alike on the Mor- 
man and non-Mormon. The teachers for 
these schools are selected in most cases by 
the Mormon bishops of the wards, and are 
paid partly by a general tax levied on the en- 
tire property of tlie Territory and partly by 
tuition. It is a rare thing for any one to be 
appointed a teacher unless he or she is a bap- 
tized Mormon, and is willing to teach the 
Mormon doctrines, and use every influence to 
strengthen the power of the priesthood. 
These school-houses are also used as assem- 
bly-rooms for their so-called rehgious gath- 
erings, and the writer has heard from the 
speakers in their meetings the most treason- 
able utterances. 

It will thus be seen that the educational 
system of Utah, instead of being the buhvark 
of national patriotism, is made to subserve 
the purpose of a designing priesthood in 
fastening the chains of bigotry and disloyalty 
upon the minds of the rising generation. 

The Mormons bring thousands and tens of 
thousands of children from the Old World, but 
give them no opportunity to become Amer- 
icanized. 

How long is this state of things to con- 
tinue? Must our government see this con- 
stant stream of disloyal emigration filling all 



these mountain regions, and make no effort to 
secure the rising generation from the igno- 
rance, superstiMons, and disloyalty of their 
fathers ? 

No, there is a moral power back of party 
spirit, deeper than political excitement, that 
will in the near future let demagogues know 
that it is better to educate citizens than to 
fight criminals. 

We believe it is the duty of the govern- 
ment to take the entire control of the educa- 
tion of the children in Utah; to organize a 
territorial school board of loyal citizens, and 
through this board establish a public-school 
system that will be, both in theory and prac- 
tice, entirely under the control of loyal citi- 
zens. 

In brief, let Congress enact such laws as 
will take all political and municipal power 
from the leaders of the Mormon Church, and 
also compel them to send their children to 
good schools, where they will be under influ- 
ences that will tend to make them worthy 
citizens of the United States. 

It may be said these are radical measures. 
Admitted; but they are constitutional, and 
are on the side of right. Nothing but radical 
measures will cure this disease. 

The patient has gangrene in the foot. The 
surgeon advises amputation. The patient 
demurs. The disease spreads to the ankle. 
The surgeon again urges radical measures. 
The patient hesitates. The leg is diseased. It 
is now prompt action or death. The limb is 
removed near the body to save the life. The 
nation has three paths before it. Prompt 
radical measures ; the knife near the body ; or 
the death of the patient. 



4. SOURCES OF MORMON STRENGTH. 



EEV. EGBERT G. m'nTECE, 

Pastor Presbyterian Church, Salt Lake City. 



Eev. J. C. Hartzell, D.D. 

Dear Brother: In your letter of the 12th, 
in reference to the National Education 
Assembly at Ocean Grove, in August, you 
ask me to give you a statement of what I 
regard as "the most dangerous facts in 
Mormonism, and the chief duty of the gov- 
ernment in the premises." I deem it my duty 
to comply with this request, for I know no 
better way to hasten the uprooting of Mor- 
monism, as a great social evil and political 
conspiracy against civil liberty, than to give 
the American people definite information 
concerning its tremendous strength, and its 
deliberate use of that strength ^br the most 



pernicious and dangerous purposes conceiv- 
able in the heart of a free republic. 

Let me begin by saying that my knowl- 
edge of Mormonism has been derived from a 
six years' residence at its head-quarters, in 
the Mormon capital of Salt Lalce City, to- 
gether with a diligent study of its entire 
history, and personal observation of its 
results in various communities iu the north- 
ern half of Utah. Hence, in saying that, in 
proportion to its numbers, there is not 
another organization on the face of the earth 
that equals Mormonism in resources and 
inclination for all sorts of social, civil, and 
moral mischief, I am not speaking at ran- 



TEE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



139 



dom; and it, is only because the great mass 
of the American people are in the dark in 
regard to the strength of this diabolical 
system, and the danger connected with that 
strength, that ihey are doing so little for its 
overthrow. Let it be the aim of the tirst 
part of this letter, therefore, to bring out, as 
far as conciseness will allow, the facts on 
these two points: I. The Strength of Mor- 
monism. II. Its Dangerous Use of that 
Strength. This will prepare the way for 
looking at the other point you ask my 
opinion about, namely: The duty of the 
government concerning the matter. 

Five things go to make up, in the main, 
the greatly under-estimated strength of Mor- 
monisra. 

1. Thoroughness of Organization. The 
Territory is first divided into some twenty 
" stakes," or districts, each having its spir- 
itual presiding bishop and his subordinates. 
These twenty districts are again subdivided 
into some two hundred and fifty wards, each 
with its secular presiding bishop and his 
subordinates, and all under the iron rule of 
President Taylor, his two counselors, and 
the twelve apostles, who constitute one of 
the most despotic tribunals on the globe. 

I ought also to add that the Mormons con- 
tinue to colonize Idaho and Arizona, and 
virtually hold the balance of power in these 
future States of the Union. 

Another cunning thing about this organi- 
zation is the number of offices vnth which to 
bribe the dissatisfied into acquiescence. In 1880 
the total number of Mormons in Utah and 
Idaho was reported by themselves at 109,- 
000. Leaving out 33,000 children under 
eight years of age, there were 76,000 mem- 
bers. Of this number over 23,000 were office- 
holders. 

2. Another element of strength in Mor- 
monism is its financial system. This is based 
on the tithing plan. A tenth of all that is 
raised or earned is required to be paid over 
to the priesthood. I was present in the 
great tabernacle, three years ago, when the 
annual reports were given. The proceeds of 
the tithing for that year were stated to be 
$458,000 ! The total receipts of the priest- 
hood from all sources for that year were 
stated to be the enormous sum of $1,097,000! 
Think of this sum annually pouring into the 
lap of the most unscrupulous priesthood on 
earth I 

3. A third element of strength in Mormon- 
isni is its missionary 'policy. Some three 
hundred missionaries are kept scattered 
through the various countries of the globe, 
encouraged to activity by the hope of some 
higher office as the reward of their success. 
Nor do they spread tlieir drag-net of decep- 
tion over the earth in vain, since every j'ear. 
when their net is hauled up upon the shores 
of Utah, it is found to contain from '2,200 to 
3,000 converts. Last year, from April to 



December, there were landed in Salt Lake 
City alone 2,280 of these converts, to say 
nothing about other parts of the Territory 
and of adjoining Territories. Thus far, nearly 
1,800 have arrived the present season. The 
Scandinavian countries and Great Britain 
furnish the greater part of these proselytes. 
Just contrast this with tiie fact that the 
aggregate of all the accessions to all the 
Protestant Churches in Utah, during the 
same length of time, does not reach one 
hundred and fifty. 

4. A fourth element of strength, which 
need be only mentioned, is tlie lact that the 
disloyal priesthood who are carrying on this 
dangerous conspiracy against the Republic 
and its most sacred institutions are clotlied 
with the privileges and powers of American 
citizenship. 

5. But the crowning element of strength 
lies in the fact that these vast resources are in 
the hands of a priesthood ivhom the people are 
taught to obey with the inost implicit submis- 
sion, as possessing Divine authority. 

So much for the elements of Mormon 
strength. Now let me speak, in the second 
place, of the dangerous use which is made of 
this strength by the Mormon priesthood. 

1. The compact organization is used as a 
most terrible engine of oppression toward 
the deluded people. No freedom of opinion 
or action is allowed — not even in regard lo 
the newspaper one wishes to read, the store 
he wishes to trade at, the school he wislies 
to patronize ; not even in regard to the con- 
trol of his own property. And if a Gentile 
can be deterred from settling in a community, 
whether as farmer, merchant, teacher, or 
minister, by all sorts of annoyances, such as 
shutting off his irrigating water, pulling 
down his fences, besmearing his doors, 
breaking out his windows, hooting and yell- 
ing about his premises at midnight, or by 
putting in liis way all sorts of obstacles to 
the purchasing of property, even from those 
who wis!) to sell — if any or all these 
things combined can deter an upright and 
loyal American citizen from settling in one 
of these Mormon coniraunities, over which 
the American flag pretends to wave, it is 
considered a great and honorable victory by 
the Mormon priesthood. Did space ijermit 
I could illustrate every one of these particu- 
lars with actual occurrences, most of them 
coming withai mj'- own personal knowledge. 
Of course, such priestly tyranny and outrages 
are confined mainly to the rin-al communi- 
ties, and can no longer interfere with Amer- 
icans in towns like Salt Lake City and Og- 
den. But tiie crowning part of such out- 
rages is. when some priestly Mephistopheles, 
like Geo. Q. Cannon, or President John 
Taylor, stands up in the great tabernacle ou 
Sunday, before a goodly collection of Gentile 
tourists, and with angelic smiles, which Satan 
himself could not surpass, and patriotic 



140 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



tones, which Benedict Arnold could not 
equal, dilates upon the superior friendship 
of the priesthood for the sacred principles of 
American liberty, and the heartiness with 
which they welcome Americans of all parties 
and creeds to Utali as permanent residents 1 
Seldom does a Sunday pass m Salt Lake City, 
from May to October, wlien this lying furce 
is not enacted by some assumed Melchizedec 
or Aaron ic priest, while Satan and his 
attendant imps chuckle in their sleeves under 
the protecting sliadow of the galleries. 

2. No pen can describe the dang-erous use 
which the Mormon priesthood make of the 
enormous financial income of over a million 
dollars. If some doubtful Congressman, 
visiting Salt Lake City, is to be captured by 
having his hotel bill paid at the Walker 
House ; or by free carriages for himself and 
part}' about the city; or by free liquors at 
some Mormon residence, or on a special train 
to the Lake ; or if other Congressmen, in 
Washington, are to be conciliated by elegant 
champagne suppers at the delegate's resi- 
dence ; or by choice presents of various 
kinds; or if daily papers, hke one in Omaha 
and one in New York, are to be subsidized 
into defense of Mormonism, the tithing-fund, 
and half-a-dozen other funds, are ample for 
such and other purposes. 

Within a month, a prominent American 
who held a Cabinet position under President 
Grant, and was also Minister to England, 
(Edwards Pierrepont,) was captured by the 
notorious Cannon, and was hobnobbing with 
the nasty criminal here in Salt Lake City, to 
the shame and indignation of every patriotic 
American who witnessed or knew of the 
humiliating spectacle. 

3. The dangerous use that is made of the 
missionary policy of the Mormons. The 
three hundred or more missionaries who are 
kept abroad are trained to take advantage of 
every conceivable form of deception and mis- 
representation, in order to entice into the 
terrible Mormon net the honest but unedu- 
cated peasantry of Great Britain and the 
Scandinavian countries. Keeping the Book 
of Mormon and the odious and peculiar doc- 
trines of Mormonism in the background, the 
Bible and the general truths of Christianit}-- 
are put in the foreground. Tlien. taking ad- 
vantage of our free-land S3'stem, the cunning 
missionary paints before the dazzled eyes of 
the landless peasants attractive and resist- 
less pictures of the free homes which the 
Mormon priesthood can give them in the 
saints' paradise in Utah, where the Lord's 
people have assembled out of wicked Babylon 
for his pure worship and service. Out of 
the immigration fund a loan bearing ten per 
cent, interest is granted to the moneyless con- 
verts to pay their passage. Once in Utah, there 
is little opportunity for the poor to escape. 
And, in fact, their little ten, fifteen, or 
twenty acres of ground, which they never 



could have secured in the old country, recon- 
ciles them, to the unpleasant things in Mor- 
monism which, for the sake of their homes, 
tliey are ready to shut their eyes and gulp 
down. Placed under American influences, 
they would become a worthy class of citi- 
zens ; but, placed under the terrible instruc- 
tion of this deceiving, anti-American priest- 
hood, deceived into thinking that the Ameri- 
can Government is trying to rob them of 
their civil and religious rights, and that the 
enforcement of the laws is persecution be- 
cause of their rehgion, the terrible result is 
that there is being built up here in Utah a 
commonwealth that is permeated through 
and through with bitter disloj^alty and hatred, 
not only toward the government, but toward 
American ideas and institutions. Yet, on 
public occasions, there is a cunning and 
plausible assumption of great friendship for 
the government, and great loyalty to the 
Constitution and the laws, on the part of 
prominent Mormons. But it deceives no 
true American. 

4. The dangerous use that is made of their 
political privileges. The priesthood train 
their people to vote in solid mass, and to 
regard the claims of tlie priesthood superior 
in every way to the claims of the govern- 
ment. The result is that no American has 
ever been allowed to take his seat in the 
Legislature. I say American in distinction 
from Mormon. Americans have been elected 
two or three times, b>it have not been allowed 
to take their seat, although Americans pay 
nearly one half the Territorial taxes. In Salt 
Lake City, although the non-Mormons are 
two fifths of the population, they are not 
allowed a single represemative in the city 
goverimient. To prevent this the twenty- 
one wards of the city are consolidated on the 
election-ticket. The political privikges pos- 
sessed by the Mormons are used for no oiher 
purpose than to build up the interests of the 
priesthood which are in bitter liostility to 
the interests of the American people and 
their government. Indeed, a true and con- 
cise definition of Mormonism is simply this : 
An organized conspiracy against free govern- 
ment and good morals, carried on in the in- 
terest of a score of unscrupulous men calling 
themselves '• the holj" priesthood." Is it not 
time for the American people to say: Down 
luith such a conspiracy ! 

5. Then the crowning danger of all is this 
assumption of supreme authority, here in the 
heart of the Republic, by a cunning and 
audacious priesthood which assumes to have 
power to open and shut the gates of heaven 
and hell. The people are required to con- 
sider this priestlaood supreme over American 
government and law. They are made to 
swear the most terrible oaths of allegiance to 
this priesthood in the unclean Endowment- 
house. This is the essence of Mormonism. 
Not only a union of Church and State, but 



THE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



141 



sucli a union as merges the State into the 
Ctiurcli. The Mormon priesthood is supreme 
in all civil and religious affairs. Polygamy is 
simply a little sprout on this poisonous tree. 
Defiance of the government is another 
sprout. Why should the American people 
fool away tlieir time in trimming off these 
sprouts — sure to grow again ? I say, in the 
name of patriotism and Christianity, let them 
uproot the tree! But how is tliis to be done ? 

Evidently, the first duty of the govern- 
ment is to take away the privileges of citi- 
zenship from every person who holds office 
under this hierarchy, on the ground that 
these privileges have been forfeited by their 
perversion to the upholding of a conspiracy 
against the government. A good beginning 
lias been made in the Edmunds Bill, by dis- 
franchising the polygamists. But every solid 
reason which can be assigned for such dis- 
franchisement applies with far greater force 
to the disfranchisement of every one of tlie 
23,000 ra(?mbers of this disloyal priesthood. 
A band of rattlesnakes in the Rocky Mount- 
ains, obstructing the path-way of American 
citizens, seems to me to have just as much 
right to the privileges of American citizenship 
as this band of priestly conspirators against 
American law and liberty here in Utah. 

The most effectual way of depriving this 
priesthood of their forfeited privileges of 
citizenship, that I know of, is G-overnor 
Murray's plan of abolishing the Territorial 
Legislature, and substituting a Legislative 
Commission of about seven men, appointed 
by the President. Instead of tilling this 
commission with adventurous politicians 
from the East, on a fat salaiy, I would have 
tliem taken from the intelligent and patriotic 
American residents of Utah, who are thor- 
oughly familiar with the peculiar situation. 
And I would give them only a nominal 
salary, say of a thousand dollars a year. 
As a government measure this would be no 
more radical in principle than the present 
commission under the Edmunds Bill. And 
the present commission is a failure, both 
from their lack, as strangers, of a clear 
understanding of the peculiar state of afi^iirs 
liere, and because the fat salary of $5,000 
for a few weeks' work tends to make them 



indifferent as to how long this unsettled 
state of things shall continue. But with the 
legislative power in the hands of a commis- 
sion of loyal Americans, with no election of 
Territorial officers at all, the Governors, the 
Judges, and the U. S. officials remaining a.s 
now, the government would then be in a 
condition to establish here t!ie American 
free-school system, by means of the Legisla- 
tive Commission, and could appropriate funds 
for that purpose. 

But on such assemblies as yours at Ocean 
Grove we, who are contending for free gov- 
ernment and Christian education in Utah, 
must depend for so informing and arousing 
public opinion tliat our legislators at Wash- 
ington shall feel compelled to embody the 
inielligent and earnest opinions of the people 
in clear and vigorous Congressional enact- 
ment, which will uproot from the land this 
powerful and dangerous conspiracy. 

Let me add to the foregoing the following 
encouraging statistics of the present condi- 
tion ot Christian work in Utah, for Mdiich I 
must tax my memorj', the documents con- 
taining them being all in the city : 

Five Protestant denominations are repre- 
sented — the Episcopalian, Methodist, Presby- 
terian, Congregational, and Baptist, the last 
having come in only within the past eighteen 
months. There are about 42 ministers, 28 
organized churches, and 1,100 comrauni- 
cauts. They possess church and school 
property worth about $325,000. The school 
work is confined to the first four denomina- 
tions mentioned. They have 58 schools in 
about 55 different towns, employing about 91 
teachers, and educating upward of 4,000 
pupils, three fourths of which pupils are 
from Mormon families. 

There are about the same number of Sab- 
bath-schools and Sabbath-school pupils. This 
entire Church and school work is carried on 
at an annual expense of about $120,000, 
about equally divided between the two 
departments. This is vjhat G hristianity is 
doing for the redemption of Utah. It is a 
suggestive question to ask: What is Ration- 
alism or Infidelitjr doing ? 

Yours in behalf of Christian education and 
American liberty, RoBT. G. M'NlECE. 



5. POLYGAMY WOMAN'S CREED OF MORMONISM. 



MRS. ANGIE F. NEWMAN, LINCOLN, NEB. 



PENDING- the test of the constitutionality 
and efficiency of the Edmunds Bill comes 
the protest against infraction of the higher 
law of religious liberty. 

Mormonism and polygamy are not iden- 
tical. 



Polygamy, not Mormonism, is the political 
problem. In this era of universal thinking, 
private opinion, injected into public thought, 
rapidly crystallizes into sentiment. Senti- 
ment is the pivot upon which issues balance. 
To arrest sentiment touching the insidious 



142 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



recognition of the vile system which this 
firotest implies, we shall attempt to show 
that polygamy is not only the Woman's Creed 
of Mormouisra, but that it is the hostile flag 
run up to the American people. To cut it 
down, the Mormon hierarchy, in whose hands 
it is held, must be detiironed. 

In the early creed of the Church of Lat- 
ter-Day Saints it is true no polygamous tenet 
is recorded. The Mormons, at the inception 
of their order, were a simple, religious peo- 
ple, at variance with the Christian Church 
in form of worship rather than spirit. 
Britain was the scene of their greatest ac- 
tivity. At their General Conference Session, 
held in London in June, 1857, the conference 
statistics registered in P]urope 50 confer- 
ences, 700 organized branches, aud 6,000 
men ordained to the priesthood. Not until 
nine years after Joseph Smith had promul- 
gated his " Revelations " on " Celestial Mar- 
riage," and the apostles were living in its 
fruition, was the infamous document known 
in England. It was first pubhshed in the 
Millennial Star, a Liverpool Mormon paper, 
thence communicated to the missions by 
mail. 

Once introduced, polygamy was the virus 
which corroded their spiritual life and be- 
came the disturbing element which threat- 
ened disintegration, so much so, that in 
Europe, in six months after its promulgation, 
from a membership of 31,00i», 1,776 had 
apostatized. Woman being foremost in the 
revolt, the leaders got themselves to devise 
a revelation declaring polygamy essential to 
woman's salvation. How well they suc- 
ceeded is shown in the fact that to-day po- 
lygamy is the key-stone in this whole struct- 
ure of Mormonisra. The difficulties which 
confront tlie Utah Commissif>n in the execu- 
tion of their work proves they have invaded 
a thoroughly-organized ecclesiastical system, 
such as the world has seldom seen. 

The very existence and perpetuity of this 
system is made possible by enfranchised 
plural wives. 

The Mormons teach paradise is an imme- 
diate or lower realm, where dwell angels and 
cherubim and the spirits of those who have 
died in other faiths. Here, there is no mar- 
rying nor giving in marriage. The celestial 
kingdom is the highest and polytheistic realm 
of the eternities. Polygamy is basal to the 
celestial kingdom. Here the holy priestiiood 
of the Church of Latter-Day Saints sit upon 
thrones and are not angels, but are gods, as 
are Isaac and Jacob and Solomon. The feraily 
each possessed on earth shall be the nucleus 
of the kingdom which he rules, aud the fa- 
vored wife the queen who sits with him on 
the throne. Here, also, shall be marrying 
and giving in marriage, and they shall ex- 
pand tlieir dominions thereby thrnughout 
infinite ages. The saints and angels of 
heaven are subject to these, and shall per- 



form for them the most menial ofiSces because 
"they did not abide my law," that is, enter 
into polj'j^amy on earth. 

The soul, according to the Mormon tlieorv, 
has three stages of existence. 

1. The ante-natal. 

2. The human. 

3. The post-mortem. 

To tlie perfection of a soul, the second 
state is necessary. Even the spirit of Clirisi 
himself was tui'fitted for celestial relations 
until he had passed the crucible of human 
life. So each pre-existing spirit is floating 
through space, waiting earthly tenement. 
Refusing to enter into polygamy, woman de- 
nies her Heavenly Father the opportunity 
to perfect a soul. This is the unpardonable 
sin for which she shall be damned. 

She denies the waiting spirit earthlj'- tab- 
ernacle — deprives it of eternal happiness by 
sliuttiug it out of the celestial kingdom. Foi" 
this, the loss of a soul, she shall be damned. 

site limits the radius of her husband's 
celestial kingship, for whicli she shall be 
damned. A more subtle device to enthrone 
man's lowest passions upon the altar of 
woman's religious life could not have been 
arranged elsewhere than in Satan's realm, 
or have been communicated by other than 
himself. It is a standing demonstration of 
the personality of his Satanic majesty. It 
involves every motive of the Moslem harem, 
the Hindoo suttee, the Airican slave jungles, 
or the American brothel. It is at once 
woman's subjugation, her high privilege, iier 
political capital, her celestial exaltauion. 

" To provide for all contingencies, the 
proxy" and " spiritual " wife reijime is ad- 
justed. The proxy wife is the widow, who 
marries another Mormon for ti-nie, to be given 
over to tlie first husband in eternity. The 
proxy wife must be, at least, in part, self- 
supporting, and expect little attention from 
the h\isband unless he choose to give it. Ic 
is enough tliat he consents to raise up chil- 
dren to his friend. If no one is found willing 
to stand proxj'- to the widow, she forfeits the 
relation in heaven. Again, no marriage can 
be eternal except the ceremony has been 
performed in the Endowment House. Hence, 
if a widow has buried her husband before 
she reaches Salt Lake, and wishes to be his 
in eternity, she may first secure Ids transfer, 
from paradise to the celestial kingdom, by 
proxy baptism, (of which sacrament here- 
after,) and then she enters tlie proxy mar- 
riage relation, which act insures to lier dead 
husband the marriage relation in the king- 
dom, and the opportunity to build up a fam- 
ily of his own ainong the celestials, to 
which shall be added the children she has 
borne him on earth in the proxy relation. 
And thus a man may, by proxy marriage, se- 
cure the release and transfer of a deceased 
friend, or of the distinguished dead whom he 
would honor. 



THE AMERICAN' MORMON PROBLEM. 



143 



Spiritual wives are of two classes. The 
one is on tlie affinity theory. If the husband 
and wife are not kindred spirits, the wife, 
linding her affinit}^, may be secretly sealed 
to liitn for all eternity. Or, if the affinity 
does not last, they may be divorced and try 
again. Instances are recorded of " sealing " 
from three to nine husbands before true souls 
met. Sometimes a man is sealed to his first 
wife for eternity to gain iier consent to take 
a second wife. If so, the iirst wife becomes 
the female head of liis eternal kingdom. 

The second class consists of old ladies of 
wealth, whose property needs protection, and 
"generous elders marry them and look after 
that same property." Slie will be his real 
wife when she is " rejuvenated " in eternitj-, 
" which prospect," says an autlioricy, " is 
very fascinating, for I have known very 
youthful elders display their self-sacrifice by 
marrying very old but very wealthy ladies." 

Eliza Snow is the most notable woman in 
the Mormon Church. She was a plural wife 
of Joseph Smith and a proxy wife of Brig- 
ham Young. She personates Eve in the 
marriage ceremony of the Endowment 
House, is on the editorial staff of the Wom- 
arCs Exponent; a poetess of merit, she has 
written many of the sacred hymns of the 
Church, has been to Palestine to establish 
Mormonism within its sacred boundaries, and 
has written a history of her travels. In 
manner she is gentle, persuasive, dignified. 
In a close conversation with the writer upon 
the sanctity of polygamy, she said : " The holy 
men of old entered into polygamy to build 
up an earthly kingdom, and we to build up a 
heavenly. Nowhere are words of censure 
written against Rachel for becoming the sec- 
ond wife — or against her sister Leah for 
the strategy she used in securing a husband, 
nor against either for giving their handmaids 
to Jacob; nor yet agaiust Jacob for receiving 
them. Rachel's children were the boys, 
Joseph and Benjamin, whom God honored; 
but he first blessed Leah with sons because 
she was hated of Riichel. The sons of the 
handmaids, moreover, were not illegi'imate 
— they were counted among the twelve." 
" Yes," said I, " but Christ instituted the 
better system of monogamy." " You believe 
in Christ?" There was an earnestness in 
her dark eyes that was incomprehensible, as 
she answered: "How have %jou read the 
gospels, that you do not know Clirist him- 
self was a polygamist, Bethany his earthly 
home, the sisters Martha and Mary his plural 
wives, Mary Magdalen another, and the fa- 
vorite, for she was with him at the cross and 
the sepulcher?" Eliza Snow believes, and 
hence she draws many a faltering young girl 
into the fearful maelstrom by the magic of 
her resistless touch. 

The sophistry of the Mormon theory of an 
improved race under the polygamic regime 
lias proof in their offspring, witliout collat- 



eral evidence. It may be read, without an 
interpreter, in the distorted figure, the blank, 
soulless eye, tlie inelastic steps, of the Mor- 
mon youth; in whom there is an entire ab- 
sence of character. 

A Saturday afternoon in Zion's Co-opera- 
tive Mercantile Institution, where they did, 
last year, a business of $4,500,000, will con- 
vince any doubter of the low grade of the 
common people. These country women, 
looking themselves as though they liad been 
exhumed from some charnel-house of the 
Middle Ages, its mold still hanging upon 
them and hiding in their frayed garments, 
come, dragging troops of half-clad, wretched 
children, vv^ho hide in each tattered fold, and 
shrinic if one speaks softly to them. They 
are as untutored as the coyotes of the sage 
brush. The only thing which saves the Mor- 
mon people from race annihilation or imbecil- 
ity is the constant influx of other nationali- 
ties. These are mainly from the vigorous 
laboring classes w"ho, per se, must survive a 
generation or two. No Hindu or Moslem 
harem, no hut of savage or camp of debauchee, 
furnishes such a type of polygamy. The 
marriage of two sisters in a single day to one 
husband is no novelty, nor yet the marriage 
of the mother to the husband of her daugh- 
ter. Where longevity permits, the Mormon 
patriarch may have the grandmother, the 
mother, and the daughter as wives at the 
same time. Tlie Greek tragedy repeats it- 
self. The son marries the mother, not by 
accident, but design, and neither CEdipua 
puts out his own eyes, nor Jocasta hangs 
lierself for shame. All this is done in the 
name of religion. " All souls are begotten 
of the gods before they come to the earth 
for tabernacles or bodies." Hence any union 
is justifiable so the souls, weary of floating' 
through space, be furnished tabernacles. 

There is an abundance of testimony bear- 
ing on this phase of Mormonism, but it is too 
gross to be reproduced — sworn affidavits 
which have been circulated in current litera- 
ture in Salt Lake without protest or denial 
by the Mormon Church ; and j^et, sucli is the 
loyalty to tlie order of this system, that in 
these very homes, if death stand at the bed- 
side of the first-born, the mother must meet 
her agony alone. If the father be spending 
the week with another wife, though only a 
board partition separate him from the scene, 
he must not be disturbed. So of the wife. 
She may come to the verge of the valley 
alone, even though her husband be so high 
in virtue as to sit in the halls of Congress 
and frame laws for the less enlightened. 

That there are women who, thiough all 
this, stand inimical to the laxity of morals 
engendered by the system, and to death keep 
the sanctity of marriage, only proves the in- 
tensity of their religious life. 

These may be recognized when met by 
the compressed lips, the pallid cheeks, the 



144 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



wild, averted eyes, which seem to stand as 
sentinels at the bolted doors of the soul, to 
give no sign of the conflict within. These 
women have, as martyrs, laid upon the altar 
of the Church tiiat one indivisible treasure 
which God intended should be hers in its 
entirety — the love of one strong, manly heart. 
To be sheltered thus is to be beyond the 
swoop of the angry storm, where the spent 
thunder may be heard, but cannot break. 
To open this defense to another, and another, 
and another, is to invite the lightning's flash 
and the black hne of its fatal trail. Many a 
trembling hand has lifted the latch which 
has witliered in the effort, and the palsied 
heart has given no tale to the bloodless lips. 
Dumb before that shrine on which the flies 
are now kindled by stranger and unwelcome 
hands, she watches the lurid blaze with iiol- 
low eyes which "murder sleep" and wonder 
if the thorns which, in her side do prick and 
sting her, are the only materials which com- 
pose a crown. Then passes before her wan- 
dering eyes a dim vision of that other crown, 
the spear, the blood, the agony. This is her 
Gethsemane. The disciple is not above liis 
Lord; she iialls upon her knees by the de- 
serted altar on which these strange fires are 
still burning, and mutters, in broken sylla- 
bles, "Not my will, but thine, be done." 
0, strange infatuation 1 a curse on these 
blind guides who ensnare innocence for lust 
and teach immortal honors ; who decoy 
young lambs into this jungle to enfold them 
to bosoms filled with barbed arrows. The 
shepherds of this flock are abroad in the 
land. There's not a green pasture on God's 
footstool these marauders have not traced. 
That they have gleaned faster than we know 
we shall presently show. 

The Mormon apology, that polygamy dis- 
poses of the social evil, is equally fallacious. 
Eminent jurists and Christian writers, resi- 
dent in Salt Lake, assert there is " more 
private prostitution and illegitimacy in Utah 
than in any otlier place in the civilized 
world." Further than this, almost every 
home is an "establishment." There is no 
need of closed doors and darkened windows 
to designate its character, for the Church 
has set its seal of approval, and all things are 
legitimate. " Some two years ago an in- 
vestigation of the subject of plural marriages 
was made by a committee, at the request of 
a society in the East, and, from the facts ob- 
tained, the conclusion was reached that 
about eighty per cent, of the plural marriages 
wei-e necessitated by previous immoralit3^" 
Two classes of men enter into polygamy — the 
ambitious and the gross. Every ollce in the 
Church or Territory is held by a polj'gamist. 
Thus the lust of the flesh and the lust of 
ofiice are co-partners. 

Two classes of women, also, are attracted 
to the system: 1. The illiterate peasantry', 
upon whom great honor is conferred in being 



chosen as wives to God's — elect. 2. The 
highly sensitive, over-wrought, religious en- 
thusiast. The number of women proselytes 
is, by far, the greater. This is due to woman's 
credulity and the dominance of religious sen- 
timent. 

Empire is the colossal dream of the Mor- 
mon hierarchy. To insure its fulfillment, 
they have built an iron-clad, ecclesiastical 
system, vulnerable at no point from within, 
and capable of great resistance to outward 
attack. It is a tiieocracy of president and 
councilors, of bishop and apostles, of 
prophets, priests, and elders, organized of 
God and serving in accordance with special 
revelation. Nevertheless, these inspired au- 
tocrats resort to intrigue impossible to men 
less holy. They devise plausihlp schemes to 
build up and perpetuate their temporal 
power, in the execution of which individual 
liberty is a lost atom. They excommunicate 
and anathematize, they " blood atone " or 
send to the nethermost hell the violators of 
their decrees. The absolutism of man-power 
is nowhere in the civilized world so complete, 
or its sway so despotic. Tiie inauguration 
of anjr civil measure which promises enlarged 
liberty to the people is sure to involve the 
conservation of priestly tyranny. For such 
a purpose and to such end was the elective 
frcmchise extended to ivoman! The practical 
sagacity of Brigham Young enabled him to 
foresee the loss of civil power to the Church 
by the influx of Gentile population, follow- 
ing the completion of the U. P. R. R. and 
the development of mining interests. 

The ballot was put in the hands of Mormon 
women to avert this disaster. Its very ex- 
ercise is tyranny. The Territorial law was 
amended to read, " every male citizen and 
his wife." If a man marry a girl of twelve 
to-day, to morrow she is qualified to vote. 
The religious services of the Mormon Church 
are held in the Tabernacle (which has a seat- 
ing capacity of 12,000) on Sunday morning, 
and in the ward meeting-houses in the even- 
ing. On Sunday eve before election, at these 
meetings, the printed ballot is put into the 
hands of the voter; and no one dares vote 
other than the Church ticket. Salt Lake has 
twenty-one wards. The election is general. 
Should any one ward have a Gentile majorit}'-, 
it is lost in the general aggregate. If a 
Mormon have seven or twenty wives who, 
for reasons, cannot go to the polls, lie votes 
the seven or twenty tickets, phis iiis own. 

There is standard and multiplied Mormon 
authority for the statement that babes are 
entered in the voting list. Ann Eliza Young 
says: "Every person of the female sex, 
from the babe in the arms to the oldest bed- 
ridden imbecile crone, have the elective fran- 
chise." "The most hateful part of it is, 
they are helping to tighten their own bonds, 
and are doing it, too, under compulsion." 
Mrs. Steuhouse adds testimony : " Brother 



THE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



145 



Brigham, instend of having his own single 
vote, would have nineteen for his nineteen 
wives, to say nothing of his daughters and 
liis whole army of spiritual wives whicli ho 
might produce." "I have seen one solitary 
man driving into the city a whole wagon- 
load of women of all ages and sizes — they 
were going to the polls, and their votes 
would be owe." It must be borne in miud 
these ladies have spoken and written of their 
experience, and no Mormon has dared as- 
sail their statements. 

A writer in llie February ninnber of tlie 
Anti-Polygamy Standard, published in Salt 
Lake, says : •' The masses of the people cast 
a ballot or cut a throat from precisely the 
same motive — the duty of obedience to 
Church superiors — and, consequently, not 
one in ten thousand, male or female, under- 
stand the responsibility attaclied to the free 
exercise of the ballot." 

But, it is asked, if polygamy involves men- 
tal as well as physical courage, why did the 
Mormon women flood Congress with petitions 
against its suppression ? For precisely the 
same reason, it is the behest of the Church 
sovereigns. During the G-raiit administra- 
tion, a monster petition was sent Mrs. Grant 
hy the Female Relief Society, of Salt Lake, 
asking her influence with the President in 
favor of polygamy. Eliza Snow inaugurated 
the plan. " Hundreds of names were copied 
from the books of the society without any 
permission being obtained, or even asked, of 
their owners — and the names of those who 
liad been dead many years were added." 
The same coercion was exercised in the pe- 
tition sent to Congress after the introduction 
of the Edmunds Bill. The Salt Lake Tribune 
published the following concernmg tne 
method of obtaining these signatures: 

" In every village and hamlet in Utah last 
night men were tramping about with the pe- 
titions. Telegraphic dispatches went forth 
from the Church to complete the work in a 
single night, and there was not a Mormon 
house or cabin in the Territory that was not 
visited by Tile-minded curs asking little chil- 
dren to indorse their own shame and their 
parents'. These signatures will be all col- 
lected in Salt Lake, and a monster petition, 
several hundred feet long, will be sent to 
Congress, calling upon it to forbear to 
strike the blow. While the petition is going, 
thousands of mothers wlio compelled their 
children to sign because they dare not do any 
thing else will be on their knees praying for 
a happy deliverance from polj'-gamy and bet- 
ter days for Utah. Each school was can- 
vassed, and every little boy and girl old 
enough to hold a pen was required to sign. 
If they could not make a legible scrawl, the 
teachers or bishops would get permission to 
write the names for them. The children 
looked upon the thing as a sort of diversion 
-which broke the monotony of the regular 
10 



routine of school life, and had the petition 
memorialized Congress to give them all the 
small-pox the signing would have gone on 
just the same." 

Again, tlie inquiry is put, "Why, if polyg- 
amy has no redeeming element, do notable 
women of Mormonism lecture in its behalf 
in a crisis like the present?" One of the 
missionaries, who is now on a lecturing tour, 
is Mrs. Zina 'D. Young, wife of the deceased 
President. She has spoken in Washington 
atjd been " presented " to many members of 
Congress. A " Mother " gives in the Febru- 
ary number of the Anti- Polygamy Standard 
Sister Zina's private views on the subject. 
A friend, whose husband had taken a second 
wife, went to Mrs. Young foi' counsel: 

"Tell me, Sister Zina," said she, "tell me 
honestly, for you are so much wiser and 
hoher than I am, does the fault lie in my- 
self that I am so miserable ; or is the system 
to blame for it? I have prayed long and 
earnestly for submission, and if the trouble 
arises from the wickedness of my own heart 
I am ready to die, if necessary, to expiate 
that sin, for I cannot live in this agony any 
longer." Zina replied: 

" Sister, you are not to blame, neither are 
you the only woman who is suffering tor- 
ments on account of polygamy. There are 
women in this very house (Brigham Young's) 
whose hearts are full of hell,'and in that room 
yonder," painting to a door, "is a woman 
who has been a perfect fury ever since 
Brother Young married Sister Amelia Fol- 
som. Brigham Young dare not enter that roimi, 
or she would tear his eyes out. It is the sys- 
tem that is to blame for it, but we must try 
and be as patient as we can." And yet Sis- 
ter Zina, who has seen a house full of women 
with hell in their hearts on account of po- 
lygamy, goes now around the country preach- 
ing the doctrine. Mothers of America, for 
God's sake, shield your innocent lambs from 
these decoying wolves I 

And this is I'rom the pen of one who drinks 
to the dregs of this poisoned chalice wlncli 
is held to her lips by other hands, because 
in it is the elixir of life eternal. 

It is evident from the foregoing that the 
political . status which polygamic relations 
have given woman has neither broadened her 
sphere nor dignified the State. The ballot in 
Utah is no synonym for liberty. Its use 
has bro\ight about a condition of things of 
which American slavery furnished no paral- 
lel, the serfdom of no despotic countries can 
equal. 

It is a condition which calls less for senti- 
ment and more for action ; less for the di- 
vine, and more for the human, effort. Let the 
woman heart which clamors, the woman 
hand which frames petitions for civil rights 
to her se.x, beware lest, is so doing, she inflict 
civil wrongs which may awaken in her own 
soul Macbeth's despairing cry, 



146 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL, 



"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this 

blood 
Clean from my hand ?" 

For, be it remembered, many a noble- 
hearted woman, in playing her part in this 
travesty of freedom, bends lier neck to the 
stroke in the same spirit as did that daunt- 
less woman of the French republic, Madame 
Roland. The scaflbld had beeu erected at the 



foot of the Statue of Liberty. Madame Ro- 
land had ascended. Her head was about to 
be laid upon the guillotine. A wild protest 
was surging through her brain. She called 
for pencil and paper, and, with the last pulse- 
beat of lier impassioned soul, she hurled upon 
her persecutors that startling anathema 
which still rings in the ear of the oppressor, 
"0 Liberty! what deeds are done in tliy 
name." 



The following are some of the letters received during the session of 
the Assembly. 



Rev. T. C. Iliff, D.D., Superintendent 
Methodist Missions in Utah, says : 
Rev. J. C. Haetzell, D.D. 

Dear Brother: In reply to your favor of 
the l'2th, I am forced to plead want of time 
as the excuse for not complying with your 
request to furnish a paper setting forth what 
I may regard as the most dangerous facts in 
Mormonism, and the chief duty of the gov- 
ernment in the premises. I am just now, and 
will be, very busy till the annual meeting of 
Utah Mission, Aug. 2, preparing full re- 
ports of this charge and of the entire work. 

1 heartily approve of your giving a day to 
a question ti:at not only deeply concerns this 
Territory, but which, soon or later, must 
interest the whole country, and, unless 
speedily adjusted, must affect the honor, if 
not the security, of the national government. 

Of one thing be assured: this Utah problem 
is not only unsolved, but its solution is be- 
coming more and more difficult each year. 
The Edmunds Bill is powerless to correct 
the evil of polygamy. And, so far as it may 
have any political significance, it can do but 
little toward changing the situation. The 
people will continue to vote as instructed by 
tiieir bishops and teachers, and the offices 
filled according to priestly dictation. I have 
no hope of any satisfactory settlement of the 
Mormon question until the general govern- 
ment " means business." In the meantime, 
the Cliristian Church must plant a line of 



sentinels up and down these rich valleys, 
keeping the tryst of a glowing evangelism. 



Hon. Wm. F. Welcker, Superintendent 
Public Instruction, California, says: 

No persons have a right to set up a system 
of rehgion the observance of which involves 
a constant and deliberate violalion of tlie 
laws of the land. Still less have others tbe 
right to come from abroad into that land to 
aid in such a purpose. It was the duty, 
many years ago, of the federal government 
to have suppressed all those practices of ihe 
Mormons which were unlawful. Every day 
of delaj"- but augments the difficulty of the 
task, prolongs crime and demoralization, and 
increases the amount of human suffering 
when the suppression shall come, as come it 
must. 

Hon. Cornelius Hedges, Superintendent 
Public Instruction, Montana, writes: 

As to the Mormons, I feel profoundly the 
danger and humiliation to whicli we are ex- 
posed from this direction. I should not con- 
sider the introduction of cannibalism as one 
half as dangerous as the degradation thut 
attends upon polj'gamy. National legisla- 
tion thus far has been only trifling. We 
should repeal tlie Organic Act of Utah and 
place all the Mormons under martial law, 
quarantine against them as we would those 
who had leprosy, small-pox, or yellow fever. 



On motion of Rev. J. C. Hartzell, D.D., the National Education 
Assembly of 1883 adopted the following : 

Resolved, That it is the duty of the American nation to wipe out as speedily as possible 
that damning spot which curses Utah and adjacent Territories known as polj'-gamous Mor- 
monism, and that we call upon the government to renew the policy of President Hayes by 
which the importation of emigrants from Europe for polygamous purposes be prohibited. 

Resolved, That we look with horror upon tlie fact that scores of Mormon agents are at 
work among the ignorant and superstitious whites of the Southern States, and are annuallj' 
shipping to Utah hundreds whom they deceive. 



THE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



147 



6. THE DOCTRINES OF MORMONISM. 



KHV. THEOPHILUS B. HILTON, A.M., B.D., 

Late Principal of Salt Lake Seminary. 



THE principal books whence the theology 
and doctrines of the " Church of Jesus 
Christ of Latter-Day Saints " are derived are 
the following : 

(I) The Bible. (2) " The Book of Mormon." 
(3) "Doctrines and Covenants." (4) "Ma- 
terialism." (5) ■' Celestial Marriage." (6) " Key 
to Theology." (7) "Spencer's Letters." 
(8) " The Voice of Warning." (9) " Mormon 
Doctrine; or, Leaves from the Tree of Life." 
(10) " Catechism for Children." (11) "The 
Women of the Bible," and (12) " The Pearl 
of Great Price." 

Mormonism teaches that: 

1. Grod is a pei-son, with tlie form of a 
man clothed with flesh and blood. 

2. Jesus Christ is the first-born Son of 
God; a perfect and sinless man, but not 
equal with the Father. 

3. The Holy Ghost is a person possessed 
with the Spirit of the Father. 

4. All men born into this world are spirits 
from another sphere sent into this world as 
probationers for a higher slate of existence 
after death. 

5. Man is not naturally depraved, is not 
born in sin, and is not responsible for any 
sin but his own. 

6. Man is a free agent, and is fully re- 
sponsible, and will be held accountable for 
his sins. 

7. There are four orders of beings : (a) Gods, 
who are immorlal spirits, perfect in organiza- 
tion of soul and body. Tliis will be the final 
state of men who have lived on the earth in a 
perfect state of obedience to law. {b) Angels, 
who are immortal beings who have lived on 
the earth in a state of imperfect obedience 
to law. (c) Men, who are immortal beings 
in wh.om a living soul is united to a living 
body, (d) Spirits, who are immortal beings, 
and fill the air, waiting to be supplied with 
bodies. The miUions tliat fill the air around 
our globe compose only one of the many 
colonies of spirits. 

The immortal part, or spirit, of all who die 
in this world goes into prison, or an inter- 
mediate state. The gospel (of Mormonism) 
is and will be proclaimed by angels to all 
the spirits in prison. All who receive that 
gospel will be saved ; all who reject it will 
be damned to all eternity. 

Mormonism teaches the doctrine of the 
witness of the Spirit and the gift of the Holy 
Ghost. God reveals his will not only by 
Scripture revelation, but by the word of his 
mouth or by the voice of an angel. God 
comes in contact with all true beUevers, re- 



vealing his will by his Spirit, or by an 
angel, or in his own person in dreams, 
visions, and impressions. God comes to liis 
people just as he came to the ancient saints, 
talking face to face with his cliildren. The 
Bible is God's revealed Word, but is not a 
complete and full revelation of God's will 
concerning his cliildren. Hence the neces- 
sity of supplemental revelation. God spoke 
in a special manner to Joseph Smith; he 
speaks to his successors and his followers, 
guiding them in all the concerns of life. 
The Holy Ghost is bestowed by baptism, the 
rite being administered by a Mormon priest 
of tlie Order of Melchizedek. 

The gift of the Holy Ghost bestows 
miraculous power, power to speak in tongue^, 
foretell the future, heal tlie sick, cast out 
devils, cure the maimed, give sight to the 
blind ; in a word, to perform miraclea of" 
every kind. 

In cases of healing, the afflicted is restored 
by anointing with consecrated olive oil, and 
by laying on of hands, accompanied witii 
prayer. 

This rite, or ceremony, is quite similar, if 
not identical, with that performed by Dr. 
Cullis, of Boston, for similar purposes. 

Mormonism teaches that, at the end of 
time, this earth will be purified and made a 
new earth. That Jesus Christ will appear 
to judge the world and reign in righteous- 
ness. 

There are two orders of the priesthood — 
the Aaronic and Melchizedek. The latter .is 
eternal. The Mormon priests maintain that 
they hold the keys of heaven. That their 
organization is the only true Church of God. 
That John Taylor, the successor of Jo.seph 
Smith and Brigham Toimg. is God's vice- 
gerent on earth, and the head of the true 
Church and only authoritative priesthood on 
the earth. Whatsoever is loosed on earth by 
tliis priesthood is loosed in heaven, and 
whatsoever is bound on earth is bound in 
lieaven. 

The following are the "Articles of Faith," 
as drawn up by "Joseph the Seer," pub- 
lished in "Times and Seasons," (vol. iii, 
p. 709:) 

" We believe in God the Eternal Father, 
and in his son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy 
Ghost. We believe that men will be pun- 
ished for their own sins, and not for Adam's 
transgression. We believe that, through the 
atonement of Christ, all mankind may he 
saved by obedience to the laws and ordi- 
aaiieesof the Gospel. We believe that these 



148 



CHBISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



ordinances are: First, Faith in the Lord 
Jesus Christ ; second, Repentance ; third. 
Baptism bj'' immersion for the remission of 
sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for tlie gift 
of the Holy Ghost. We beheve that a man 
must be called of God by prophecy, and by 
laying on of hands by those who are in au- 
thority, to preach the Gospel and administer 
in the ordinances thereof. We believe in the 
same organization that existed in tiie primi- 
tive Church, namely : Apostles, prophets, pas- 
tors, teachers, evangelists, etc. We believe 
in the gilt of tongues, prophecy, revelation, 
visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, 
etc. We believe the Bible to be the word of 
God, as far as it is translated correctly; we 
also believe the Book of Mormon to be the 
word of God. We believe all that God has 
revealed, all that he does now reveal, and 
we believe that lie will yet reveal many great 
and important things pertaining to tlie king- 
dom of God. We believe in the literal gath- 
ering of Israel, and in the restoration of 
the Ten Tribes ; that Zion will be built upon 
this continent; timt Curist will reign person- 
ally upon the earth, and that the earth will 
be renewed and receive its paradisaic glory. 
We claim the privilege of worshiping Al- 
mighty God according to the dictates of our 
conscience, and allow all men the same privi- 
lege, let them worship how, where, or what 
they may. We believe in being subject to 
kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in 
obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law. 
We believe in being honest, true, chaste, 
benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to 
all men ; indeed, we may say that we follow 
the admonition of Paul: We believe all 
things, vre hope all things, we have endured 
many things, and hope to be able to endure 
all things. If there is any thing virtuous, 
lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy, 
we seek after these things. 

"Joseph Smith." 

Theft and Robbery. 

Mormonism teaches theft and robbery. 
I do not say every Mormon is a thief and a 
robber, for some men are better than their 
creeds. But I do affirm that Mormonism 
teaches that to rob and steal for Christ's 
sake is well pleasing to God. 

The 'robber-bands of Nauvoo and the 
plundering expeditions of the Mormons while 
in Missouri, and their extensive pillaging of 
emigrants since -they have been in Utah, are 
tlie practical results of Mormon doctrine. 

John D. Lee, a bisliop of the Mormon 
Church, who was convicted and shot for 
participation in the Mountain Meadbw mas- 
sacre, an atrocious murder ordered by the 
Mormon Church, says, in his confessions, 
page 72: 

" The Mormons made an attack on Gal- 
latin one night, and carried off much plun- 
der. I was not there- with them, but I 



talked often with those that were, and 
learned all the facts about it. The town was 
burned down, and every thing of value, in- 
cluding the goods in two stores, was carried 
off by the Mormons. I often escaped being 
present with the troops on their thieving 
expeditions by loaning my horses and arms 
to others who liked that kind of work better 
than I did. . . . Men stole simply for the 
love of stealing. Such inexcusable acts of 
lawlessness had the effect to arouse every 
Gentile in the three counties of Caldwell, 
Carroll, and Daviess, as well as to bring 
swarms of armed Gentiles from otiier locali- 
ties." 

Lee is loud in his lamentations over the 
evil deeds of the Mormons. On pp. 157-160 
he gives an account of several murders com- 
mitted in and near Nauvoo by order and 
sanction of the authorities of the Mormon 
Church. He clearly shows that murder was 
a Mormon method of getting rid of tliose who 
were in any way offensive to the Mormon 
saints, or whose property was needed for 
Church purposes and could not be obtained 
as an offering. 

Blood Atonement. 

Mormonism teaches the doctrine of Blood 
Atonement. This doctrme may be briefly 
stated as follows: There are sins so of- 
fensive to God that the transgressor cannot 
receive forgiveness unless his life is taken 
and his blood poured upon the groimd as an 
offering to appease the wrath of God. If a 
Mormon becomes an apostate, or even weak 
in the failh, that one, in order to be saved, 
must have his throat cut and his blood 
spilled upon the ground. 

This doctrine is taught and believed by all 
good Mormons. It has been enforced in the 
past in Utah, and would be practiced to-day 
were it not for Gentile influence. 

Did the Mormon leaders ever teach the 
doctrine of Blood Atonement? 

George Q. Cannon said to the Washington 
correspondent of the Inter-Ocean: "There 
has been a great deal of talk about the doc- 
trine of blood atonement. This talk origi- 
nates in the fact that we do not believe in 
hanging. We think that if a man sheds 
blood, his blood should be shed by execu- 
tion. In Utah Territory a criminal who has 
been sentenced to death can elect whether he 
shall be shot or hung. Tliis fact has fur- 
nished a basis for all the talk about blood 
atonement. It does not follow that because 
we believe a man who kills another should 
have his blood shed each Mormon is going 
to be the executioner. It is a process of 
law, and has no reference to any Church 
ordinance." 

The following is taken from a discourse 
delivered by Brigham Young in the Taber- 
nacle, Salt Lake City, February 8, 1857 : 

"Brother Cummins told you the truth this 



THE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



149 



morning wiili regard to the sins of his peo- 
ple. And I will say that tlie time will come, 
and is now nigh at hand, when those who pro- 
fess ouf faith, if they are guilty of what some 
of this people are guilty of, will lind the ax 
laid at the root of the tree, and they will be 
hewn down. What lias been must be again, 
for the Lord is coming to restore all things. 
The time has been in Israel under the law of 
God, tlie celestial law, for it is one of tlie 
laws of that kingdom where our Father 
dwells that is near at haud. But now I 
say, in the name of the Lord, thit, if this 
people will sin no more, but faithfully live 
their religion, their sins will be forgiven them 
without taking life. You are aware that 
when Brotiier Cummins came to tlie point of 
loving our neighbors as ourselves, he could say 
yes or no as the case might be ; that is true. 
But I want you to connect it with the doc- 
trine you read in the Bible. When will we 
love our neigiibor as ou"selves ? In the first 
place, Jesus said that no man hateth his own 
flesh. It is admitted by all that every per- 
80,1 loves himself. Now, if we do rightly 
love ourselves, we want to be saved and 
continue to exist ; we want to go into the 
kingdom where we can enjoy eternity and 
see no more sorrow nor deatli. This is the 
desire of eYQTj person who believes in G-od. 
Now take a person in this congregation who 
lias knowledge with regard to being saved 
in the kingdom of G-od and our Father, and, 
being exalted, one who knows and luider- 
stands the prmciples of eternal life, and sees 
the beauty and the excellency of the eter- 
nities before him compared with the vain and 
foolish things of the world, and suppose tliat 
lie is overtaken in a gross fault, that he has 
committed a sin that he knows will deprive 
him of that exaltation which he desires, and 
that he cannot attain to it without the shed- 
ding of his blood, and also knows that by 
having his blood shed he will atone for that 
sin, and be saved and exalted with the go is, 
is there a man or woman in this house but 
what would say, ' Shed my blood that I may 
be saved and exalted with the gods ?' All 
raaiikiud love themselves ; and let these prin- 
ciples be known to an individual, and he 
would be glad to have his blood shed. 
That would be loving themselves even unto 
an eternal exaltation. "Will you love your 
brothers or sisters likewise when tliey have 
committed a sin that cannot be atoned for 
without the shedding of their blood? That 
is what Jesus Christ meant. ... I 
have seen scores and hundreds of people for 
whom there would have been a chance (in 
the last resurrection there will be) if tlieir 
lives had been taken and their blood spilled 
on the ground as a smoking incense to the 
Almighty, but who are now angels to the 
devil, until our elder brother Jesus Christ 
raises them up — conquers death, hell, and 
the grave. I have known a great many men 



wlio have left this Church for whom there is 
no chance whatever for exaltation; but if 
their blood had been spilled it would have 
been better for them. 'I'he wickedness and 
ignorance of the nations forbid this principle 
being in full force, but the time wiU come 
when the law"S of God will be in full force. 
This is loving our neigiibor as ourselves ; if 
ho needs help, help him; and if he wants 
salvation, and it is necessary to spill his blood 
on the earth in order that he may be saved, 
spill it. Any of you who understand the 
principles of eternity, if you have sinned a 
sin requiring the shedding of blood, except 
the sin unto death, would not be satisfied 
nor rest until j-our blood should be spilled, 
that you might gain that salvation you de- 
sire. That is the way to love mankind." 

Remarks by President Heber C. Kimball, 
delivered in the Bowery, Salt Lake City, 
August 16, 1857: 

" I do not feel vain, but I feel to say, 
brethren and sisters, lay aside your vanity 
and your feelings to exult ; there will be a 
time when you can exult and do it in right- 
eousness and mercy. There will also be a 
day when you will be brought to tlie test — 
when your very hearts and your inmost souls 
will melt within you because of the scenes 
that many of you will witness. Yes, you 
will be brought to that test, when you 
will feel as if every thing witliin you would 
dissolve. Then will be the time you will 
be tried whether you will stand the test or 
fall away. I have not a doubt but there will 
be hundreds who will leave us and go away 
to our enemies. I wish the,y would go this 
fall : it might relieve ns from much trouble ; 
for if men turn traitors to God and his serv- 
ants, their blood will surely be shed, or else 
they wih be damned, and that, too, according 
to the covenants." 

The Mormon leaders assert that " the word 
of Brigham Young or the priesthood is the 
word of the Lord." 

To prove the prevarication and dishonesty 
of George Q. Cannon in his interview with 
an Inter- Ocean correspondent, we cited sev- 
eral paragraphs from the sermons of Brigham 
Young and Heber C. Kimball, as published 
in the standard or autliorized works of the 
" Cliurch." Wo proved conclusively that 
such doctrine of blood atonement is a funda- 
mental principle of salvation in the Mormon 
"Church," as well as showed tlie duplicity, 
cunning, and false statements of George Q. 
Cannon, First Vice-President of the Church 
of Jesus Christ of Latter-Daj'' Saints. No 
Mormon of intelligence dare deny the publi- 
cation of such teachings b}' the "Church," 
for they have been published to the world. 
No doul>t Cannon and others could heartily 
wish they had not been published, for they 
stand a lasting disgrace, and a horrible feat- 
ure in the sj'stem pretended lo be molded ac- 
cording to the teachings of the meek and 



i.-o 



CnRISTIAN EDUCATORS m COUNCIL. 



lowly Jesus. But the words can never be 
erased. The facts cannot be anniiiilated. 
" What is written is written." The great 
woilder is that George Q. Cannon — that any 
man — can unbhishingly deny that this horri- 
ble doctrine was taught and is still believed, 
for llie masses of the Mormon people believe 
in it fully, but are restrained from practicing 
it by public opinion, the Christian influences 
that surround them, and fear of tlie national 
laws. 

Ashamed of their teaching, as they may 
be, as their denial seems to indicate, it is 
nevertlieless true that blood atonement was 
a doctrine taught and practiced by them, is 
believed by them now, and would be prac- 
ticed and rigorously enforced, if only circum- 
stances of isolation and ability permitted. 
The lew selections that we made, taken from 
the so-called sermons of Brigham Young and 
Heber C. Kimball — many more can be pro- 
duced — seem harsh, severe, cruel, and horri- 
ble to Christian, or even moral, minds ; they 
cause a shudder of horror to all who read 
them. But we know, from positive and di- 
rect information which admits of no denial, 
that the discourses, as delivered on the stand 
in the Bowery and Tabernacle by Young and 
Kimball and others, were much more cruel, 
wicked, and bloodthirsty than ihey appear in 
the printed works. Many testify that it was 
blood-curdling to hear them when spoken. 
The Mormon leaders taught tlie people that 
God was a great Moloch, greedy lor human 
flesh, and thirsting for human blood. 

The "sermons" were reported by G. D. 
Watt and J. V. Long, in phonographic short- 
hand, and they, when transcribing for tiie 
printer, left out many blasphemous and bloody 
expressions, unfit for the public eye. Then 
these reporters placed the corrected manu- 
scripts in the hands of Albert Carrington, 
who was then Brigham Young's confidential 
clerk or private secretary, and who was also 
the editor of the Deseret News. He pruned 
the manuscripts thoroughly, cutting out many 
severe and bloodthirsty passages, so that the 
" sermons " might appear less disgusting and 
less distasteful to the public eye — Brigham 
Young asserting that it was "not well to 
give too strong meat to the world." This 
cutting down and pruning by the reporters 
and the editor of the Deseret Neivs, "for wise 
purposes," offended Heber C. Kimball very 
much, and he publicly and privately com- 
plained that "they have taken the music out 
of my speeches." 

Thus we learn that the " sermons " by the 
triumvirate — Young, Kimball, and Jeddy 
Grant —were unfit for moral ears or even 
worldly eyes, and in tact were really diabol- 
ical. They are bad, very bad, as now pub- 
lished, but what must they have been when 
blurted out without let or hinderance by those 
ungodly fanatics 1 Let not tlie Mormons for- 
get this pruning process; this cutting down 



and patching up to make "sermons" appear 
decent; and let them henceforth never deny, 
but own with blushing, that direct blood 
atoning was and is one of the cardinal doc- 
trines of salvation in the " Church " of Jesud 
Clu'ist of Latter-Day Saints. 

Treason. 

A belief that the government of the United 
Stales ought to be overthrown is one of the 
leading doctrines of the Mormon Church. 
Treason against the government of the United 
States is preached in every tabernacle and 
meeting-house in Utah. 

A multitude of quotations like the follow- 
ing might be given. Brigham Young said, 
in a discourse in 1856: 

" It is not the prerogative of the President 
of the United States to meddle with this mat- 
ter, and Congress is not allowed, according to 
the Constitution, to legislate upon it. If wt3 
introduce the practici- of polygamy, it is not 
their prerogative to meddle. ... I say, as the 
Lord lives, we are bound to become a sov- 
ereign Slate in the Union, or an independent 
nation by ourselves ; and let them drive u3 
from this place if they can. If they get rid 
of polygamy, they will have to expend three 
liundred million dollars for a prison, and roof 
it over from the Rocky Mountains to the 
Sierra Nevadas. The sound of polygamj' is 
a terror to the pretended republican govern- 
ments. Why? Because this work is des- 
tined to revolutionize the world, and bring 
all under subjection." 

Orson Prate has said: 

" There is another reason why this plural- 
ity should exist among the Latter-Day Sauits: 
We believe that the nations of the earth artS 
doomed to destruction ; we believe that, ac- 
cording to Mormon revelations, given in the 
Book of Doctrines and Covenants, that the 
sword of the vengeance of the Almighty is 
already unsheathed and stretched out, and 
will no more be put back into the scabbard 
until it falls upon the head of nations, until 
they are destroyed. We believe that the 
Saints are being gathered to Zion from among 
the nations, to become the instruments in the 
Lord's hand of accomplishing his will." 

Mormonism is hostile to our institutions and 
disloyal to our government, decfaiing, by 
President Brigham Young, that the politico- 
ecclesiastical government of the Mormon 
Church " circumscribes the governments of 
this world;" 

And again declaring, by the chief of its 
twelve apostles, "that all gov§rnments, save 
the government of the Mormon Church, are 
unauthorized and illegal, while any people at- 
tempting to govern themselves by laws <if 
their own making and officers of their owH 
appointing are in direct rebelhon against the 
kingdom of God." 

The followiirg will illustrate their attitudo 
toward our officers; The Sunday foUowinj^ 



THE AMEEICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



151 



the reception of the news in Utali that Pres- 
ident Garfield was shot and mortally wound- 
ed, when every loyal heart was achinf;, and 
every lo}'al head was bowed in sorrow, Hugh 
S. Gowans, a leading Mormon, said lo a large 
congregacion in Tooele : " President Garfield 
will soon be dead; this is wliatwe have been 
praying for. Our pra\-ers are being answered. 
Garfield raised his liand against polygamy ; 
therefore God Almiglity struck him down." 
Hundreds in the congregation shouted, Amen! 
Amen! 

Obedience to the Priesthood. 

The inspiration of, and obedience to, the 
priesthood is one of the essential doctrines 
of Mormonism. > 

Obedience to their leaders is an absolute 
requirement, and extends to all the acts of 
life. A member of the Mormon Church has 
no right to leave the Territory of Utah with- 
out first obtaining peimission of President 
Taylor. 

The members of the Mormon Church are 
under oath not only to pray, not onlj^ to vote, 
as the priesthood may dictate, but they have 
sworn to obey absolutely all commands, even 
to the taking of life. The blind dupes of 
Mormonism yield implicit obedience. To re- 
fuse to obey even counsel is ahnost untliink- 
able to the mind of the zealous Mormon. A 
few leaders govern with great rigor, I might 
say with tyrann}^, the souls and bodies, the 
energies and earnings, of their superstitious 
followers. The hierarchy hold the people in 
a grip from which nothing has been able to 
release them. 

Polygamy. 

The doctrine of polygamy is 7iotan essential 
principle of Mormonism, but is certainly one 
of the leading doctrines of the Mormon 
Church. And to the men who are zealous 
Mormons it is one of tlie most precious reve- 
lations of their great prophet. 

And the doctrine grows more precious in 
proportion to the growth of the animal nat- 
ure. In fact, polygamy was born of inspired 
animalism. 

The theory of polj-gamy is that the atmos- 
phere around our globe is full of spirits, 
forming one of the many colonies of spiritual 
beings. These spirits are vehemently clam- 
oring for bodies, and if we had microscopic 
ears we could hear the piercing wail of tliese 
spirits pleading for bodies. It is the duty of 
men and women to exert themselves to the 
utmost to supply these spirits with bodies. 

Polygamy, or plurality of wives, is ordained 
of God and given to Joseph Smith by revela- 
tion. Mormonism teaches that " it is tlie 
duty of a woman to give other wives to her 
husband, even as Sarah gave Hagar to Abra- 
ham. But if she refuse, then it shall be law- 
ful for the husband to take other wives with- 
out her consent, and she shall be destroyed 
for her disobedience." 



Mormonism teaches that "no woman can 
secure exaltation in heaven uidess united in 
marriage to a Latier-Day Saini of the Mor- 
mon Church." 

Mormonism teaches that God is not only a 
man, but a married man ; that, he was mar- 
ried cycles of ages ago, and all beings in the 
universe are iiis natural offspring by his nu- 
merous wives. Men are a race of gods in 
embryo, and are eligible to celestial thrones. 
The greater the number of wives and chil- 
dren a man has in this world, the greater 
will be his kingdom in the future world. 

Some Mormons are married for time and 
eternity, and their union will never cease. 
Others are married for time only, and death 
separates them, and in eternity chey will live 
with other parties. 

It has often occurred in Utah tliat those 
married for time only have been sealed to 
other married persons for eternity. Tliis has 
been the cause of much immorality. One 
case will serve to illustrate thousands. A 
young couple were married for lime on!}', 
and living but a short distance from my house 
in Salt Lake City. The .young man was an 
industrious mechanic. His wife was yoimg 
and quite attractive. A Mormon bishop cast 
lustful eyes upon her, and they were" sealed " 
for eternity. The bishop was only human, 
and it was human to anticipate the joys of 
eternity, and the 3''oinig wife was induced, 
partially by promises of the Mormon bishop, 
whom she supposed a man of God, and par- 
tially by threats, to allow him to become her 
husband in practice, if not in name. When 
these relations were discovered by the young 
husband, by an accident, of course he "as 
heart-broken, and found relief by being sent 
on a mission to England. This is only one 
case out of a multitude of similar ones. 

Mormonism teaches that God has many 
wives, and that Jesus Ciirist is his tirst-born 
son by his first wife, and in a special sense 
is God's heir, and the eldest brother of the 
human family. 

Mormonism teaches that Jesus Christ was 
married to the sisters Marj' and Martha, and 
to Mary Magdalene, and is now living with 
them in the celestial world. 

Mormons believe not only in the father- 
hood of God, but also in the motherhood of 
God. 

In regard to some of these relations, Mor- 
monisni teaches such strange and horribe 
doctrines I dare not evnn repeat them — I 
tread on the verge of blasphemy against the 
Holy Ghost. 

In Utah marriage between brother and 
sister has taken place, and men have treated 
their own daughters as if they were their 
wives. 

These things, as far as I know, are not 
common. But it is a thing of frequent oc- 
currence for a man to marr.y his nieces, not 
only one at a time, but all of them. It is a 



153 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



common thing for a man to marry a whole 
family of sisters. Many a man in Dtali has 
married his moCher-in-law. I know of a 
number of cases where a mother, daughter, 
and granddaughter are all married to jthe 
same man, and all living with iiim as wives 
and beai'ing children. Disraeli used to say, 
" It is tlie unexpected that happens." In 
Utali it is the incredible, the uuthiulvable, 
that happens daily. 

The following quotations are taken from 
published sermons which were preached in 
Utah some years ago, and are now referred 
to more or less every Sunday by Mormons as 
final authority on tlie question of polygamy. 

Heber Kimball said : 

'■ How long do you suppose it will be be- 
fore my posterity increases to over a million? 
A hundred ;\ears will not pass before I will 
become millions myself. Brother Brigham 
and I are becoming like Abraham and Isnac 
and Jacob. We have taken a course of ex- 
altation and put our lives and strength to 
usury, and we shall inherit the blessings of 
the faithful to whom the promise is given." 

Brigham Toung said, in a discourse in 
185G:'' 

" The principle of increase is the grand 
moving principle and cause of the actions of 
men. Tlie Latter-Day Saints are bound to 
put in practice those principles that are cal- 
culated to endure and tend to a continual in- 
crease in the world to come." 

Orson Hyde, in a sermon preached in the 
Tabernacle, October 6, 1854, said : 

" Polygamy is the cord that shall revolu- 
tionize the whole world, and it will make 
the United States tremble from head to foot. 
There is such a tide of irresistible argument 
in it that, like the grand Mississippi, it bears 
on its bold current every thing that dares 
oppose its course. The revelation of the Al- 
mighty from God to a man who holds the 
priesthood and is enlightened by the Holy 
Spirit, whom God designs to make a ruler 
and a governor in his eternal kingdom, is 
that he may have many wives, that when he 
goes to another sphere lie may still continue 
to perpetuate his species, and of his king- 
dom there shall be no end. ... In yonder 
world, those who have the priesthood and 
by their faith and obedience obtain the sanc- 
tion of the Almighty, they are sealed on 
earth and in heaven, and will be exalted to 
rule and govern forever, while those who 
would not listen to the holy commandments, 
and died witlir.ut having a wife sealed to 
them, are angels — lower spirits and servants 
to them that rule. . . . Wlieii the servants 
of (ilod go to heaven there is an eternal 
union, and they will multiply and replenish 
the world to which they are going." 

President Wilford Woodruff, in the priest- 
hood meeting of the last conference, boasted 
of the fact th.at he had three wives and 
twenty or thirty children. In a sermon 



preached in the Tabernacle, in referring to 
this part of their doctrine, he said : 

" There is one principle I would impress 
with power on the mind of every saint of 
God, upon the rulers of our nation, and upon 
all the inhabitants of the land, namely: that 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with all tlie ordi- 
nances thereof, with the priesthood, which 
holds po.ver both in the heavens and on the 
earth, and the principles instituted lor the 
salvation and 'exaltation' of men — these 
principles cannot be annihilated. No com- 
binations of men can destroy them; prisons 
cannot confine them, nor grave entomb them, 
because they are eternal. Men might be put 
to prison who professed them, as was Brother 
Reynolds, but the principles are as firm and 
independent as the pillars of heaven. Rulers 
and the inhabitants of the earth have tried 
to destroy them, but it mattered not; these 
eternal principles could never be destroj-ed." 

How do polygamous Mormon husbands 
support their large families? 

In the vast majority of cases they do not 
support them. There are exceptions, but 
this is the rula Even Orson Pratt's wives 
and children were compelled to earn their 
own living. 

If a Mormon husband furnishes a " house, 
flour, and fuel," he is considered a "good 
provider." I could fill a volume with facts 
which demonstrate that polygamous Mormon 
wives support themselves. 

Are polygamous wives happy? 

I answer, No. From the time of the first 
attempt to introduce polygamy into the house 
and transform it into a harem, there never 
was a woman who desired to share her hus- 
band wiih another woman. 

No man can please or make happy more 
than one wife. Abraham tried it, and, fail- 
ing, was compelled to drive Hagar and his 
child into the desert. 

Sarah consented to admit Hagar into her 
tented home, but the presence of another 
woman sustaining this unnatural relation lo 
her husband, was torture to the soul of Sarah, 
and she could not rest until Hagar was cast 
out. 

Some of the women of Utah, who have 
been taken out of the lowest grade of society 
in the old world, and transferred to the harem 
of the New West, may not have much in- 
telligence or refinement, and hence be in- 
capable of great suffering; but, on the other 
hand, there are many women in Utah who 
have been living wiartyrs to their religion. 
They have submitted and received the revela- 
tion on polygamy because they believed it to 
be their duty; because _ their lecherous 
priests told them God demanded it, and unless 
they yielded, damnation would be their re- 
ward. 

Mrs. Mary Ami Angel Young, the first 
wife of Brigham 'Young, said to me, in a con- 
versation held about a year before she died : 



TEE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



153 



'*I have never rebelled againsti my Church, 
and while a woman's nature may rebel 
against polj'gamy, and she may feel herself 
a martyr to this cause, yet a woman can 
afford to be a martyr for a few years for the 
Bake of eternal reward." 

Mrs. Young, who at this time was quite 
aged, said many ihiugs proviug ihac all lier 
lite she had endured her religion because she 
deemed it her duty to crucify woman's nature 
for the sake of the " eternal reward.'' 

It seems strange tliat any intelligent wom- 
an can believe that "a revelation froio Jesus 
Christ " could contain such a disgusting doc- 
trine as polygamy, but Mormonism is not 
the only superstition in the world. 

If there is any thiag that will degrade and 
degrade and degrade a worn na until she for- 
gets her divine origin, it is tie practical 
effects of polj'gamy. 

Some of the more ignorant women of Utah 
may have received the doctrine of plurality 
without being capable of realizing fully what 
they were doing, but there are niultltuiies 
who have been tortured almost to the point 
of agony for years, and then finally sub- 
mitted to this infamous decree of lust by 
crucifying their noblest feelings. There is 
also a third class who would not accept the 
doctrine of polj'gamj^, and who have pro- 
tested with all the might of helplessness 
against this horrible doctrine, all to no pur- 
pose; the weak have been overpowered b}' 
the strong. Yet, so revolting is polygamy 
to some, that the high -priests of Mormonism 
have resorted in vain to the most fearful 
threats, threats of damnation and blood 
atonement, in order to compel their wives to 
subject and joj^fuUy and willingly receive the 
revelation on polj'gamy. 

The following are some of tlie exhortations 
to induce women " to live their religion : " 

J. M. Grant, one of the first presidency, 
in a sermon delivered September 21, 1856, 
and published in the Deseret News, said: 

" And we have women here who like any 
thing but the celestial law of God; and, if 
they could, would break asunder the cable 
of the Church of Christ; there is scarcelj' a 
mother in Israel but would do it this day. 
And they talk it to their husbands, to tlieir 
daughters, and to their neighbors, and saj' 
they have not seen a week's happiness since 
they became acquainted with that law, or 
since their husband took a second wife. 
They want to break up the Church of God, 
and to break it from their husbands and 
from their family connections." 

Brlgham Young, in a sermon delivered 
the same day, said: 

" Now for my proposition : it is more par- 
ticularly for my sisters, as it is frequently 
happening that women say that they are un- 
happy. Men win say, ' My wife, though a 
most excellent woman, has not seen a happy 
day since I took my second wife ; no, not a 



happy day for a year.' It is said that women 
are tied down and abused ; that they are 
misused, and have not the liberty they ought 
to have; that manv' of them are wading 
through a perfect flood of tears, because of 
the conduct of some men, together with 
their own folly. I wish my women to un- 
derstand that what I am going to say is for 
theni, as well as all otiiers. and I want those 
who are here to tell their sisters, yes, all the 
women of this community, and tlien write it 
back to the States, and do as you please witli 
it. I am going to give you from this time to 
the Gth day of October next for reflection, 
that you may determine whether you wish 
to Slay with your husbands or not, and tlien 
I am going to set every woman at liberty, 
and say to them, Now go your way — my 
women with the rest — go your waj'. And 
my wives have got to do one of two tilings: 
either round up tlieir shoulders to endure the 
afflictions of this world and live their religion, 
or they may leave, for I will not have thcnn 
about me. I will go into heaven alone, 
rather than have scratching and fightinj^f 
around me. I will set all at liberty. ' Whatl 
first wife, too?' Yes, I will hberate you 
all. I know what my women will saj" — 
' You can have as many women as you 
please, Brlgham.' But I want you to go 
somewhere, and do something with the 
whiners. I do not want them to receive 
part of the truth and spurn the rest out of 
doors. . . . Let .every man tlius treat hia 
wives, keeping raiment enough to clothe hi3 
body; and say to your wives, 'Take all that 
I have and be set at liberty; but if you stay 
with me you shall comply with the law of 
God In every respect, and round up your 
shoulders to walk up to the mark without 
any grunting.' Now, recollect, that two 
weeks from to-morrow I am going to set j'oii 
all at liberty. But the first wife will saj', 
' It Is hard, for I have lived with my husband 
twenty years or thirty, and have raised a 
familj' of children for him, and it Is a great 
trial to me for him to have more women that 
win bear children.' If my wife Iiad borne 
me all the children that she ever would bear, 
the celestial law would teach me to take 
j-oung women that would have children. . . . 
Sisters, I am not joking; I do not throw out 
my proposition to banter your feelings, to 
see whether you will leave your husbands, 
all or any of you. But I do know that there 
Is no cessation to the everlasting whininga 
or many of the women of this Territory. 
And If women will turn from the command- 
ments of God and continue to despise tli3 
order of heaven, I will pray that the curse o£ 
the Almighty may be close to their heels, 
and that it may be following them all the 
day long. And those that enter Into it and 
are faithful, I will promise them tiiat they 
shall be queens in heaven and rulers for all 
eternity." 



154 



CHRISTIAN BBUCATOBS IN COUNCIL. 



President Heber C. Kimball, in a discourse 
delivered in the Tabernacle, November 9, 
1856, spoke as follows : 

" I have no wife or child that has any- 
right to rebel against me. If they violate 
my laws and rebel against me, they will get 
into trouble just as quickly as though they 
transgressed the counsels and teachings of 
Brother Bi'igham. Does it give a woman a 
right to sin against me because she is my 
wife ? No ; but it is her duty to do my will 
as I do the will of my Father and my God. 
It is the duty of a woman to be obedient to 
her husband ; and unless she is, I would not 
give a damn for all her queenly right and 
authority, nor for her either, if she will 
quarrel and lie about the work of God and 
the principles of plurality. A disregard of 
plain and correct teachings is the reason 
why so many are dead and damned, and 
twice plucked up by the roots, and I woidd 
as soon baptize the devil as some of j-^ou." 

In a sermon delivered October 6, 1855, 
Heber C. Kimball said: 

"If you oppose any of the works of God 
yon will oppose what is called the spiritual- 
wife doctrines, the patriarchal order, which is 
of God. That course will corrode you with 
apostasy, and you will go overboard. Still a 
great many do so, and try to justify them- 
selves in it; but they are not justified in God. 
. . . The principle of plurality of wives never 
will be done away, although some sisters 
have liad revelations that when this time 
passes away, and tliey go through the vale, 
every woman will have a husband to herself. 
T wish more of our young men would take to 
themselves wives of the daughters of Zion, 
and not wait for us old men to take them all. 
Go ahead upon the right principle, yoimg 
gentlemen, and God bless you for ever and 
ever, and make you fruitful, that we may till 
the mountains, and then the earth, with right- 
eous inhabitants." 

President Heber C. Kiraball said in a dis- 
course instructing a band of missionaries 
about to start on their mission : 

" I say to those who are elected to go on 
missions. Go, if you never return — and com- 
mit what you have into the hands of God — 
your wives, your children, your brethren, 
and your property. Let truth and righteous- 
ness be your motto, and don't go into the 
world for any thing else but to preach the 
Gospel, build up the kingdom of God, and 
gather the sheep into the fold. You are sent 
out as shepherds to gather the sheep togeth- 
er; and, remember, that they are not your 
Sheep; they belong to them that sent you. 
Then don't make a choice of any of those 
sheep; don't made selections before they are 
brought home and put into the fold. You 
understand that. Amen." 

The Mormon leaders will maintain polyg- 
amy at all hazards. The high-priests of Utah 
have again and again hurled their detiance at 



the national government. Thoy publicly 
scoff and deride such puny measures as the 
lidmimds Bill. When I was in Logan City, 
Utah, I heard Mr. Andorpon, the President 
of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement 
Society, eloquenth* exhort his youi g friends, 
at a great meeting in the Logan Tabeinacle, 
to ignore all legislation and go into polygamy. 
Among other things, lie said: '-The Ed- 
munds Bill ought to be trampled under foot 
by every true Latter-Day Saint." 

Mr. Preston, President of Cache Stake, also 
declared that the Mormons would 'ignore all 
legislation in regard to polj'ganiy." Apostle 
Snow, a great Mormon leader, .said in ihe 
Tabernacle in Salt Lake City: ''Let Congress 
persecute us, let Congress disfranchise us and 
be damned; we sliall stand by polygamy." 
In Prove, in the presence of a large mixed 
audience, this same apostle of Mormonism, 
wJiile discussing the Edmunds Bill and its 
relation to polygamy, used language so pro- 
fane and obscene that it cannot be repeated 
here. The Mormons propose to maintain 
polygamy despite all legislation. 

The Edmunds Bill. 

The following are the provisions of the 
Edmunds Bill as passed by Congress and 
approved by the President : 

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Rep- 
resentatives of the United States vf America 
in Congress assembled: 

That Section 352 of the Revised Statutes of 
the United Stales be, and the same is hereby 
amended so as to read as follows, namely: 

Every person who has a husband or wife 
living, who, in a Territory or other place over 
which the United States have exclusive juris- 
diction, hereafter marries another, whether 
married or single, and any man who hereafter 
simultaneousl}'', or on the same day, marries 
more than one woman, in a Territory or other 
place over which the United States have ex- 
clusive jurisdiction, is guilty of polj-gamy, 
and shall be .punished by a line of not more 
than five hundred dollars, and be imprisoned 
for a term of not more than five years; but 
this section sliall not extend to any person 
by reason of any former marriage whose hus- 
band or wife by Such marriage shall have 
been absent lor five successive years, and is 
not known to such person to be living, and is 
believed by such person to be dead; nor to 
any person by reason of anj'' former marriage 
which shall have been dissolved by a valid 
decree of a competent court, nor to any per- 
son by reason of any former marriage which 
shall have been pronounced void by a valid 
decree of a competent court on the ground of 
nullity of the marriage contract. 

Sec. 2. That if any male person, in a Ter- 
ritory or other place over which the United 
States have exclusive jurisdiction, hereafter 
cohabits with more than one woman, he shall 



TUE AMERICAN MORMON PROBLEM. 



155 



be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on 
conviction thereof, shall be punished by a fine 
of not more than three hundred dollars, or by 
imprisonment for not more than six months, 
or by both said punishments, in the discre- 
tion of the court. 

Sec. 3. That counts for any or all of the 
offenses named in sections one and two of this 
act may be joined in the same information or 
indictment. 

Sec. 4. That in any prosecution for biga- 
my, polj^gamy, or unlawful coliabitation, un- 
der any statute of the United States, it shall 
be sufficient cause of challenge to any person 
drawn or summoned as a juryman or tales- 
man, first, if he lives or has been living in the 
practice of bigamy, polygamy, or uulawlui 
cohabitation with more than one woman, or 
that he has been guilty of an offense punish- 
able by either of the foregoing sections, Or 
by Section 5352 of the Revised Statutes of 
the United States, or the act of July 1, 1862, 
entitled, " An act to punish and prevent the 
practice of polygamy in the Territories of the 
Uuited States and other places, and disap- 
proving and annullicg certain acts of the Leg- 
islative Assembly of the Territory of Utah ;" 
or, second, that he believes it right for a man 
to have more than one living and undivorced 
wife at tlie same time, or to live in the prac- 
tice of cohabiting with more than one wom- 
an ; and any person appearing or offering as 
a juryman or talesman, and challenged on 
either of the foregoing grounds, may be ques- 
tioned on his oath as to the existence of anj^ 
such cause of challenge, and other evidence 
may be introduced bearing upon the question 
raised by such challenge; and this question 
shall be tried by the court. But, as to the 
first ground of challenge before mentioned, 
the person challenged shall not be bound to 
answer if he shall say upon his oath that he 
declines on the ground that his answer ma_y 
tend to criminate himself; and if he shall an- 
swer as to said first ground, his answer shall 
not be given in evidence in any criminal pros- 
ecution against him for any offense named in 
sections 1 and 2 of this act ; but if he declines 
to answer on any ground, he shall be rejected 
as incompetent. 

Sec. 5. That the President is hereby au- 
thorized to grant amnesty to sucli classes of 
offenders, guiltj'- before the passage of this 
act of bigamy, polygamy, or unlawful cohab- 
itation, on such conditions and under sucii 
limitations as he shall think proper; but no 
such amnesty shall have effect unless the 
oonditions thereof shall be complied with. 

Sec. 6. Tiiat the issue of bigamous mar- 
riages, known as Mormon marriages, in cases 
in which such marriages have been solemn- 
ized according to the ceremonies of the Mor- 
mon sect, in any Territory of the United 
States, and such issue shall have been born 
before the first day of January, A. D^ 1883, 
are hereby legitimatized. 



Sec. 1. Tiiat no polygamist, bigamist, or 
any person cohabiting with more than one 
woman, and no woman cohabiting with anv 
of the persons described as aforesaid in this 
section, in any Territory or other place over 
which the United States have exclusive juris- 
diction, shall be entitled to vote at any elec- 
tion held in any such Territory or other place, 
or be eligible for election or appointment to, 
or be entitled to hold any office or place of 
public trust, honor, or emolument in, under, 
or for any such Territory or place, or under 
the United States. 

Sec. 8. That all the registration and elec- 
ti<m officers of every description in the Terri- 
tory of Utah are hereby declared vacant, 
ami each and every duty relating to the reg- 
istration of voters, tlie conduct of elections, 
the receiving or rejection of votes, and the 
cauva.«sing and reuirning of the same, and 
the issuing of certificates or otljer evidence 
of election in said Territory, shall, until other 
provision be made by the Legislative Assem- 
bly of said Territory as is hereinafter by this 
section provided, be performed under the ex- 
isting laws of the United States and of said 
Territory by proper persons, who shall be 
appointed to execute such offices and per- 
form such duties by a board of five persons, 
to be appointed by the President, by and with 
the advice and consent of the Senate, all of 
whom shall not be members < f one political 
party, a majority of whom shall constitute a 
quorum. The members of said board, so ap- 
pointed by the President, shall receive a sal- 
ary at the rate of $3,000 per annum, and 
siiall continue in office until the Legislative 
Assembly of the Territory shall make provis- 
ion for tilling said offices as herein author- 
ized. The Secretary of the Territory sliall 
be secretary of the board, and keep a journal 
of its proceedings, and attest the action of 
said board under this section. The canvass 
and return of all the votes at elections in said 
Territory for members of the Legislative As- 
sembly thereof shall also be returned to said 
board, which shah canvass all such returns 
and issue certificates of election lo those per- 
sons who, being eligible for such election, 
shall appear to have been lawfully elected, 
which certificates shall be the onlj^ evidence 
of the right of such persons to sit in such 
Assembly; but each house of such Assem- 
bly, after its organization, shall have power 
to decide upon the election and qualifications 
of its members. And at or after tlie first 
meeting of said Legislative Assembly whose 
members shall have been elected and returned 
according to the provisions of this act, said 
Legislative Assembly may make such laws, 
conformable to the Organic Act of said 
Territory, and not inconsistent with other 
laws of the United States, as it shall deem 
proper, concerning the filling of the offices 
in said Territory declared vacant by this 
act. 



156 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



The Mormons boast that, although two 
decades liave passed, polygamy has not been 
prohibited nor polygamists punished. 

Many asserted that the completion of the 
great continental railroad, in 1869, would 
soon effect the destruction of polygamy ; but 
polygamy was not destroyed by contact with 
non-Mormon influences. 

Again, it was affirmed that the death of 
Brigham Young, in 1876, would cause the 
death of polygamy. Brigham died, but po- 
lygamy lived. 

Once more : it was said that polygamy 
was dying a natural death. But so tenacious 
of life has polygamy proven itself to be, 
that it has steadily increased during the past 
few years, and, at present, is spreading with 
alarming rapidity. The plague-spot is en- 
larging. 

Notwithstanding these facts, many com- 
fort themselves with the thought that the 
Edmunds Bill will not only check, but, in 
time, utterly extirpate, polygamy. I hope 
so, but do not believe it will accomplish 
what it proposes. I judge the future by the 
past. , This bill has some points that recom- 
mend it. Its passage shows a great advance 
in public opinion. It is an advance in the 
right direction, but it falls short of what Utah 
needs. 

In an editorial in the March number of the 
Utah Review, I asserted that ihis enactment 
will fail to solve the Utah problem. 

There has been great rejoicing among the 
Gentiles over the passage of tliis bill. The 
sentiment of many found expression in sen- 
tences like the following : ''Glory to God;" 
"The tirst victory in twenty years;" "The 
morning dawns;" "Light breaks at last;" 
"Praise the Lord." At a prayer-meeting in 
one of our churches in Salt Lake City, some 
asked the Lord to restrain their emotions lest 
they become too joyful over the passage of 
the Edmunds Bill. 

Congress has declared by law that polyg- 
amy is a crime, and the Supreme Court of 
the United States has pronounced the enact- 
ment constitutional. We have had enough 
vaporing about Mormonism. "We want no 
more fruitless talk or impotent bills. 

Polygamy is a crime; a very great crime; 
a crime against civilization ; a crime against 
nature ; a crime against posterity ; a crime 
against womanhood. To compromise with 
such an evil is simply infamous. 

Polygamy must be stamped out by the 
iron heel of a rigid law. 

There ought to be an immediate, uncon- 
ditional, and absolute abandonment of the 
system caUed celestial marriage. 

The leaders who have lived in defiance of 
the auti-polygamy enactment ought to be 



punished to the full extent of the law, just as 
we punish other felons. 

It is not enough to simply disfranchise 
polygamists. Polygamy must be destroyed. 
How can this be done? We answer : Abol- 
ish the Territorial Legislature of Utah, and 
vest the government in a legislative com- 
mission, appointed by tlie President, wit)) 
the approval of the Senate. Give Utah sucli 
a commission as the Willetts Bill provides 
for, and then we may hope to accomplish 
something. Let us cease to legislate, or pass 
a law that will prove effectual, that will be 
adequate to the end proposed. 

We believe that this is an irrepressible 
conflict. The Mormons propose to stand by 
polygamy, and namby-pamby legislation will 
produce notliing but Mormon contempt, 
Eeligious fanatics who practice the greatest 
crimes for Jesus' sake cannot be reformed by 
telling them "it is naughty." They must be 
coerced. We have toyed and tampered 
with Mormon polygamy for twenty-three 
years. Congress lias pursued a weak and 
contemptible policy, and this has only made 
the law-breakers bolder. Polygamists havQ 
declared that God has thus far rescued and 
saved them, whereas they have gone un- 
punished, and Mormon murderers, who, from 
Sunday to Suuday, in the Tabernacle, lift 
their red hands in prayer, have gone unhung 
because of the impotence of Congress. We 
sent an armj', in 1857, under General Albert 
Sidney Johnson, to Utah, but the result was 
humiliation to every American to the last 
degree. The imbecile course of that officer 
furnished a text to Mormon elders by which 
they convinced their superstitious slaves 
that God had interposed and laid bare his 
arm to save Mormonism. Let us trifle no 
longer. Utah needs a commission. When 
President Hayes was visiting Zion, several 
persons wisely suggested to him the pro- 
priety and justice of appointing a commission 
to govern Utah, such as controlled Louisi- 
ana after that territory had been purchased 
from the old Napoleon. President Hayes, 
acting on this suggestion, recommended a 
commission for Utah. This is what we need. 
Tliis will cut out the Gordian knot called the 
Utah Problem. By this means Utah could, 
in time, be redeemed and Americanized. 

If law-abiding citizens, East and West, 
would now unite in urgently pressing upon 
Congress the necessity of a commission, the 
Willetts Bill, or an equivalent measure, might 
be passed. Again, I say, polj'gamy must be 
stamped out. You cannot reason wilh rot- 
tenness. Polygamy is a crime, and no rev- 
elation can change its nature. Though an 
angel from heaven should preacli polygamy, 
we proclaim, Let him be accursed. 



VIII. EOUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR. 



1. THE SOUTH, THE NORTH, AND THE NATION KEEPING 

SCHOOL 



KEY. A. D. MAYO, BOSTOlSr, MASS. 



I SUPPOSE myself invited to address this 
assembly of eminent school men and 
friends of education, because of some 
unusual opportunities for observation of 
Southern affairs, as related to the rising 
school life of this portion of our country 
during: the past three years. Without en- 
larging on the details of this interesting 
experience, or even quoting authorities for 
my conclusions, I will confine mj^self to a 
plain statement of some opinions that have 
been forced upon mo through the entire 
period of my investigations, and which have 
now assumed, in my mind, the form of 
established convictions. 

I shall speak of what has been done in 
the sixteen States, which include our former 
slave territory, since 1860; endeavor to 
show how this marvelous work has been 
accomplished, in the oniy way it could have 
been, by the combined effort of tlie South, 
the North, and the nation keeping school for 
the ciiildren; and, from this estimate of these 
several educational forces, and the prodigious 
work that still remains to be done, I shall 
try to outline the true method of success in 
the future. 

If I were required to present to a Euro- 
pean audience the most forcible illustration 
of the workings of republican institutions 
in our country, I should certainly select 
the history of the development of what we 
may call the new education in our Soutliern 
States, from the breaking out of the civil 
war in 1861 to the present date. 

I speak of the new education in this connec- 
tion. Up to 1860 the slave States liad a 
system of education well adapted to perpetu- 
ate the dominant form of Southern society. 
It consisted of a reasonably thorough and 
extended system of collegiate, academical, 
and military schools for the sons of the 
supei-ior class and such recruits from the 
lower orders of the white people as gave 
promise of unusual ability, with a large 



development of the ordinary female seminary 
of a generation ago for the corresponding 
class of girls. A considerable number of 
the sons and daughters of wealihy people 
were also expensively educated by private 
tuition at home, attendance on Northern 
schools, or at institutions abroad. There 
was also a good deal of tlie sort of family 
and church instruction in political, religious, 
and social ideas that is always going on in a 
concentrated and aristocratic order of society. 
The result, as we all know, was the training 
of, perhaps, the most intelligent and forcible 
aristocratic class in Cln-istendom, which dis- 
played an energy in revolutionary politics 
and on the battle-field whicli, for four 
years, held the fate of the Union in suspense, 
and arrested the attention of the civilized 
world. 

But, of course, in this scheme of education, 
all but two or three of the twelve mill- 
ions of the Soutliern people were left with 
no systematic or persistent attempt at school- 
ing. 

The four millions of slaves were almost 
completely shut out from every sort of 
school ; although American slavery, itself, 
WHS perhaps the most elfective university 
through which any race of savages was ever 
introduced to civilization. In that severe 
training-school the African Negro learned to 
work, acquired the language of a civilized 
people, and took on at least some apprehen- 
sion of the only religion that ever proposed 
to break every yoke and proclaiia all men 
the children of God. 

The several millions of non-slaveholding 
white people were not left entirely destitute. 
Many of the better sort were partially 
educated with their superiors. Almost 
every Southern State had a periodical ex- 
perience of waking up to the importance of a 
system of common schooling for all white 
children. And especially in Virginia, the 
Carolinas, Kentucky, Alabama, and Louisi- 



158 



CIIRTSTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



ana, this was attempted, tliough, outside a 
fe-w cities, always witli imperfect success. 
But the Soutliern non-slaveholding wliite 
people, outside the rim of " poor wliite 
trash," correspoudiug to our Northern tramp, 
had the schooling which conies from disci- 
pline implied by the settlement of a new- 
country and the enjoyment of citizenship in 
a republican state. It was a training that 
brought Lhe Southern masf^es up to the 
point of that astonishing military efficiency 
which, along a line of battle of a thousand 
miles, held this mighty Union at arm's length 
through four terrible years. 

I linger over this picture of the old South- 
ern education because ignorance oF it has 
created many false notions of the educational 
problem among our Northern people. In 
1861 the South was not that abode of men- 
tal mibecility and dismal ignorance which 
many an enthusiastic teacher going down 
there has imagined. On the contrary, it was 
a country wliere, perhaps, one fourth the 
people were thoroughly trained for leader- 
ship in the aristocratic form of society, and 
where the Negro and the poor white man 
had received a discipline in the university of 
American life which was the best possible 
preparation for the new era of education, 
through schools, teachers, and books, upon 
which the South entered the very year of 
the outbreak of the civil war. 

History will record that never before was 
such a spectacle witnessed as the sudden 
waking up of Christian and patriotic zeal for 
the education of a pf-ople in a state of revolt 
against national power. It is true that the 
missionary of rehgion has often followed an 
army of subjugation to change the faith of 
nations of savages and barbarians. But, in 
our case, the Northern people displayed at 
once their immovable faith in the Union for 
which they were fighting, and their confidence 
and radical respect for their Southern breth- 
ren in revolt, by taking the school-house as 
the most prominent article in the baggage- 
train, and leaving the teacher to build up 
the waste places in the track of desolating 
war. The most thoughtful of our Northern 
people, from the first, believed that a good 
system of popular education of the Southern 
masses would liave prevented the war and 
opened a way for the peaceful abolition of 
slavery. But, since that was not permitted, 
tiiey believed that the only security for the 
restored Union would be that general en- 
lightenment of both races which would 
bring the vast majority of the Southern 
people to a condition of intelligent citizen- 
ship. And, having no doubt of the success 
of the war, the same class " took time by 
the forelock," and within a year from the 
firing on Sumter had established the school 
for the "Contraband" along the Athmtic 
coast, from Washington to Beaufort, down 
the Mississippi, through the inland soutJi- 



west, and at the city of New Orleans. In 
short, the school master and mistress followed 
the army during the progress of the war; 
instructing thousands of the Negroes of 
every age : expending large sums contrib- 
uted by the benevolence of the Christian 
people of the Nortii ; every-where supported 
by the military power and, to a considerable 
extent, aided indirectly by the government. 

In ] 862 the national government voted a 
munificent donation of pubhc lands for the 
establishment of agricultural and mechanic- 
al education in all the States. Anticipating 
tlie immense value of this donation to the 
South, the lands of these revolting States 
were religiously held in reserve against ihe 
time when they should be claimed in a 
restored Union. It is impot^sible lo estimate 
the present and prospective value of this 
gift to ihe Southern people at their present 
crisis of agricultural, manufacturing, and 
mining industry. 

In 1865 Congress took up this educational 
work, which had already outgrown tlie re- 
sources of private benevolence, and, through 
annual appropriations continued for six years, 
the gift of national property, and the diver- 
sion of confiscated lands, under the direction 
of the Freednien's Bureau, gave an impetus 
to the work of Southern education, especially 
among the freedmen, which it has never lost. 
In the ten years, from 1860 to 1870, it ia 
probable that not less than twenty millions of 
dollars were thus expended by the North 
and the nation for education in the South. 

Meanwhile, the Peabody Educational Fund 
of two millions of dollars had been devoted 
to the building up of the public school 
through the entire South. And this magnifi- 
cent benefaction has been followed by many 
large contributions, like those of the Vander- 
bilt family, Mr. Corcoran, Seney, and Slater, 
Mrs. Stone, and Mrs. Hemenway, with great 
numbers of others, which have poured a 
constant stream of helpful aid soutliward 
for the past fifteen years. Neither should 
it be forgotten that the great majority 
of Northern teachers who have wrought in 
this field have virtuHlly made their work a 
"labor of love; " the compensation, even of 
presidents of colleges, being less than the 
wages of Northern mercantile book-keepers, 
and of the majority of subordinate teachers 
not above that of reliable servants in North- 
ern cities. 

Por the last ten years, outside a few prom- 
inent institutions for the education of the 
white people, the great effort of the Nortii 
has been made, through the mission organiza- 
tions of the several Churches, toward the 
establishment of all grades of schools for 
the freedmen. "When the history of the 
educational work in the South by tiie Chris- 
tian people of the North is fairly written, it 
will be, in itself, the most conclusive answf r 
to the whole dmpeaclmrent of our modern 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINGE THE WAR. 



159 



Christianity by its enemies of every grade. 
The liistory of the world cannot produce a 
more affecting spectacle than the growth of 
ill's mighiy Christian philanthropy which, 
beginning amid the din of battle, has steadily 
inarched on, through all sorts of misunder- 
.''tanding, neglect, opposition, and disparage- 
ment, with amazing paiience, forbearance, and 
wisdom, to its present sca';e. To-daj\ there are 
prob.ibly not less than a hundred important 
schools, twenty of them bearing the title of 
college, with ample buildings and excellent 
facilities for religious, mental, and industrial 
educittion, established for the Southern col- 
ored people, chiefly taught by Northern men 
and women; a body of instructors not in- 
ferior to any similar class in the country in 
general capacity for such a difficult work. 
In these schools not less than fifteen 
thousand of the superior young colored 
people arc being prepared, not only as teach- 
ers and professional characters, but, what is 
more siguificaut, trained for leadersliip of the 
six roillions of American colored citizens. 
The whole problem of Negro citizenship is 
involved in the formation of a genuine lead- 
ing class — an aristocracy of character, skilled 
industry, and intelligence that shall, at once, 
give direction to the millions of these 
people, and become their true representative 
in all dealings with the white people of the 
Republic. 

And it is not too much to say that the 
colored people, the South, and the nation, 
will be indebted to the Cliristian schooling 
in these institutions for the beginning of this 
prodigious undertaking. Perhaps the most 
gratifying feature in this work is the fact 
that, at the end of fifteen years, it has con- 
quered all vital opposition among the leading 
classes of the South. Half a dozen States 
now make annual appropriations to these 
collegiate schools. Southern gentlemen are 
included in their boards of management. 
The State of South Carolina, first in secession, 
has been the first to include a colored college 
in the organization of its State University. 
Many of the schools of lower grade are now 
being included in the new system of public 
schools. The graduates of the higher sem- 
inaries are in constant demand as teachers. 
In short, it seems as if, within a generation, 
all these great seminaries will become vir- 
tually Southern universities, largely controlled 
by the Southern people of both races, en- 
dowed by Northern munificence, the most 
splendid offering in behalf of "peace on 
earth and good-will to men" ever made, 
under similar circumstances, by the Christian 
Church, in any age and land. 

Thus, within the past twenty years, the 
people of the North, in connection witli the 
government of the United States, has shown 
its confidence, respect, and affection for the 
Soutiiern people by a miglity work of educa- 
tional beneficence, conducted on lines of 



operation where it was hardly possible tliat 
the South could help itself, involving an out- 
lay, probably, all things considered, of not 
less thsn fifty millions of dollars. And the 
point we wish to press is, that this lias been 
done in the cliaracteristic American republican 
wa}^ The nation has ncjt gone into theseSiates 
toestablisli schools, antagoidzing liieir people 
and paralyzing home effort, Init has simply 
given twenty-five millions of property to aid 
in a good work, and established, in the 
Bureau of Education, one of the most potent 
agencies for inspiration, encouragement, and 
instruction possible under our form of gov- 
ernment. The Northern Churches and people 
have not gone down South to build fortresses 
of propagandism. They have wisely adjusted 
their educational work to the condition of 
the freedman ; trained him to pay money 
and labor for good schooling, and sent him 
forth, a superior person, for all the uses 
and duties of Southern citizenship. And, 
although I have no right to speak for any 
Church engaged in this great work, I believe, 
after carefid observation, that nothing would 
be more satisfactory to the Northern Chris- 
tian people than to see this splendid cluster of 
schools, with tlieir investment of perhaps $20,- 
000,000, past and present, lapse gradually into 
the hands of the Southern people as a per- 
manent gift to their new educational life. 

But we shall greatly mistake if we sup- 
pose Uie most important work in Southern 
education, during the past fifteen years, has 
been this friendly demonstration from the 
North and the nation. No people can be 
educated permanently by another people. As 
f;ir as concerns its educational life, every State 
of this Union is practically a separate people. 
Although much can be done, at certain crit- 
ical periods, as in our new States of the 
West, by material aid and the inspiration of 
superior teachers and advanced methods 
introduced from abroad, yet each of those 
great Slates to-day has built up its own sys- 
tem of education, in some respects better 
than corresponding systems in older com- 
monwealths. So must it be with the South 
in the building up of the vast enterprise of 
the new education. If tliese sixteen States, 
or those of them which were involved in the 
experiment of the Confederacy, had lain 
dormant through these fifteen years just 
outlined, or if they had wrought in an 
obstinate spirit of opposition to education, 
the prospect now would indeed be hopeless. 
For there is not power enough, under our 
system of government, in the nation, the 
Church, or the people of the North to force 
the American type of education even into 
Delaware against its will, to .say nothing of 
the gigantic folly of attempting to school a 
region larger than Europe, with eighteen 
millions of^ people, at arm's length, across a 
hostile border-land, in the face of political, 
social, and ecclesiastical disagreement, intea- 



160 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IK COUNCIL. 



sified by a race problem more complex than 
■was ever presented to any civilized land. 
Thus we can only understand the real 
significance, and predict the outcome of 
what has already been done by the Nortli 
and the nation in Soutliern education when 
we understand what has been going on 
through these sixteen States during the time 
already described. 

How sliould we expect the home educa- 
tional movement to begin in a country so 
prostrated, demoralized, and socially turned 
upside down as tiie South in 1865? And 
here I record my opinion that the Northern 
people liuve never realized and cannot under- 
stand the wide-spread ruin of every vital 
interest that fell upon the revolting States 
in 1865. 

The Confederate resistance to the over- 
whelming power of the Union was like the 
heroic, almost preternatural, attempt of the 
inhabitants of a new Alichigan village to 
fight off an all-consu ming fire that is steadily 
advancing its awful circuit, only to close in 
with more fatal destruction at the end. No 
people in modern history had been left so 
tlioroughly prostrate ss every class in these 
revolting States at the close of the war. And 
in such wholesale overturn the school al- 
ways goes first. In 1865 there were prob- 
ably not a score of the old academies and 
colleges in these States in actual session. 
Many of their buildings were destroyed and 
all dilapidated; their endowments had van- 
ished; their teachers were dead or scat- 
tered, and their patrons were at work driv- 
ing the wolf from the home door, with no 
ability to send their growing children to any 
school, or to establish any thing to take the 
place of their former systi m. The effort of 
the provisional government to place the 
Northern scheme of free elementary educa- 
tion on the ground, continued in some States 
for ten years, deserved far more respect than 
it received and more success than it at- 
tained. The radical weakness of this move- 
ment was the attempt to establish an ex- 
pensive system of popular education among 
a people who had never tried it, had not 
come to believe in it, were not able to pay 
for it, and, naturally, looked upon it as a 
hostile movement of the victorious party in 
the civil war. Yet the South to-day will 
agree with us that even this experiment had 
its uses, and left on the ground a large num- 
ber of school-houses and a growing desire 
for popular education among the masses of 
both races which has been a powerful stim- 
ulant to the home effort of the past ten 
years. 

But only an educational enthusiast will 
believe that a permanent educational move- 
ment can be inaugurated until the educated 
and responsible class is convinced of its im- 
portance, and prepared to take it up in a 
practical way. 



And, just here the leading class of the 
Southern States displayed that wonderful 
common sense and " gumption " which is the 
rarest outcome of our republican order of 
human affairs. It is possible that a French 
populace of a century ago might have been 
tired up with a prodigious enthusiasm to un- 
dertake the schoohng of the ignorant masses 
while the whole upper story of educational 
life was a hopeless wreck. Fortunately for 
our country, the superior class of Southern 
people began their new educational work in 
the plam common-sense way of first re- 
building the school by whicli their own chil- 
dren could alone be saved from a lapse into 
the barbarism of ignorance. The most piti- 
ful spectacle on earth is the revei-ting of an 
educated people to ignorance ; and that was 
the most imm.inent peril that faced the 
Southern school man in 1865. The three 
or four mihions of superior and variously 
educated white people of the South in that 
year found themselves in hopeless poverty, 
scattered over an area as large as Europe, 
outside Russia; the vast majority sparsely 
distributed through an open country; their 
homes swarming with children and youth, 
and no established sj'stem of schools to give 
them that mental training which would be 
their only outfit in the struggle for suc- 
cess. 

In this emergency it would have been un- 
natural if the people liad proceeded in any 
other way than they did: to get on the 
ground, at least, a temporary arrangement 
for the education of their own children and 
those of their white neighbors more destitute 
than themselves. To this work they bent 
themselves with a singleness of purpose and 
a pertinacity thoroughly American and de- 
serving of all pi'aise. Whatever they may 
liave thought of the great effort of the North 
and the nation in behalf of the Negro, they 
knew that it would be a questionable gain to 
give the crude elements of knowledge to the 
children of the freedmen if the offspring of 
the onlj'- educated class in the country was 
permitted to lapse into barbarism. I have 
studied carefullj'' the progress of this pro- 
dio'ious effort of the upper strata of the 
Southern people, within the past fifteen 
years, to re-establish the upper side of edu- 
cation. We must remember that, in States 
where the vast majority of respectable peo- 
ple live in the open coimtrj', the establish- 
ment of even the secondary public school 
must be the work of years, and the first 
generation will be fortunate if it gets an ef- 
fective elementary education fairly on the 
ground. For fifty years yet the academy in 
the country town and the college, as we now 
find it, will be the chief opportunity of all 
classes of white people for any thing beyond 
the mere elements of schooling, through at 
least a dozen of these great States. So, for the 
past fifteen years, these people have toiled, 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINGE THE WAR. 



161 



as nobody can know but themselves, through 
sacritiees almost ineompreheusible to our 
wealthy Northern communities, to rehabili- 
tate their little colleges and academies, and 
to furnish the small amount necessary to 
give their children such education as they 
might in these scliools. I undertake to say 
that this effort alone entitles the South to 
the profound interest, even admiration, of 
all thoughtful scliool men every- where. The 
effort has been a most gratifying success. 
Leaving out the great drift of worthless and 
indifferent private schools that have sprung 
up with a mushroom growth, tliirty-hve of 
them, as I found, in one little city of five or 
six thousand white people, the academies 
and colleges that have been actually organ- 
ized, newlv founded, or put in working or- 
der, are now, perhaps, sufficiently numerous, 
if well endowed, to meet the present wants of 
the people. But to do this it has been neces- 
sary that the most eminent teachers should 
be overwhelmed with work and live on starva- 
tion wages; that great numbers of women 
of the highest social position, and the 
daughters of the leading families, should 
give their lives to the work of instruction; 
that families strangely impoverished should 
contrive to pinch tliemselves for the school- 
ing of their young people; and that great 
number.? should still be dependent on the 
benevolence of neighbors and school cor- 
porations for what they obtained. It is im- 
possible, of course, to say how much this 
great reliabilitatiou has cost the Southern 
people in money. Outside an occasional 
gift from the North, and two or three muni- 
ficent endowments — like Vanderbilt, Tiles- 
ton, and Emery — this money has been a 
home contribution, by a people just strug- 
gling up to comfortable living, in behalf of 
the secondary and higher education, always 
under Christian influences, and every-where 
reasonably progressive. To understand 
what this eflbrt means, even to-day, is to 
supp.)se a State like Connecticut suddenly 
reduced to poverty; school funds and en- 
dowments swept away ; with the ability, at 
best, to keep afloat a three or four months' 
district school for the masses; with an oc- 
casional graded school in the cities; and the 
upper third of its youth gathered in schools 
where the widows of its governors and 
judges and the daughters of its proudest old 
families are teaching, in overcrowded classes, 
at wages ranging from three to five hundred 
a year, with an occasional prize of a $1,000 
salary at the top ; and the vast majority of 
its enterprising boys compelled to leave 
school at fourteen to " keep the pot boiling " 
at home. I know well enough the char- 
acteristic defects of 'this, the upper side of 
the New Education in the South, and appre- 
ciate the great advance that has been pos- 
sible in Baltimore, Washington, and St. Louis, 
and now in New Orleans, through the gift 
11 



of several millions of dollars by Southorn 
men like Hopkins, Pratt, Tulane, Corcoran, 
and the noble group of men who have 
founded the Washington University of Sc. 
Louis. But until I see how a Northern 
State would do better things for the children 
under similar circumstances, I must be par- 
doned lor my unaffected adjuii'ation of this 
prodigious undertaking of the leading 
Southern people since the close of the great 
war. 

But the Southern people have not paused 
with this attempt at the reconstruction of 
the secondary and higher education for the 
white race. Beyond this, of their own no- 
tion, in every State, within the past ten 
years, the people's elementary common 
school for white and colored cliildren haa 
been placed on the ground, defended through 
the dangers of its infancy, made better every 
year, until it has become a vital institution 
of Southern civilization. And when we 
consider that even England waited until 
within twenty years before she seriously un- 
dertook to be responsible for the education 
of the masses; and that all Europe, outslie 
G-ermany and Switzerland, has been ev a 
more tardy in this respect; that the frea 
public schooling even of white children waa 
p -actically unknown in the South, on any 
large scale, previous to 1860, while all in- 
struction was forbidden to the Negro ; that 
tlie whole education and entire political, re- 
ligious, and social training of the leading 
classes was opposed to the common school; 
that, in most instances, all public-school 
funds were sunk in the war, and all iho 
money, save a few hundred thousand dollars 
yearly from tlie Peabody and other funds, 
must be taken from communities where there 
is every thing to be done and so little to do 
with ; that in several States more than half 
the amount is given to the freedmen, while 
little comes back from their ta.xation ; also 
the almost insurmountable difficulties of cli- 
mate, and the condition of the open Southera 
country during half the year; this effort as- 
sumes a magnitude worthy of all respect. 
In every Southern State the establishment of 
the public school has been fought through 
in the face of every enemy that threatens 
its existence at the North. Wide-spread 
poverty has been the standing argument 
against taxation. Sectarian narrowness and 
clerical zeal, Catholic and Protestant, has 
raised the cry: "Godless," "secular," "im- 
moral,'' " communistic." Social exclusive- 
ness has turned the cold slioulder and, as 
Gen. Grant said to me at the White House, 
" there is too much reading and writing al- 
ready to suit a good many statesmen in the 
Capitol." In certain districts, and perhaps 
in the State of Louisiaua, to-day, this bitter 
conflict between the people and their adver- 
saries still goes on. Yet it can be said that 
in every one of these sixteen States the battle 



163 



CHRISTIAN EDUGAT0R8 IN COUNCIL. 



for the people's common school, iu its whole 
range of development, from the country dis- 
trict to the State university, has been won. 
Every Southern State, this year, is doing a 
little better for its children than last year. 
Say every tiling that can truly be said in dis- 
paragement of the new public schools of the 
South: their establishment and support, to 
tills date, is the most notable educational 
fact in Christendom within the past ten 
years. We must understand just how far this 
is a home woric to appreciate its magnitude. 
The two or three hundred thousand dollars of 
annual appropriation, and the labors of the 
agents of the Peabody Fund, have been a 
great help. The training of colored teachers 
in the mission colleges, supported by the 
North, has been even a greater assistance, 
althougli partiall}^ kept up by the tuition paid 
by the colored people themselves. The in- 
fluence of the Bureau of Education and its 
apostolic secretary, John Eaton, has been 
good and only good through all these j'ears. 
The support of a superior sj^stem of public 
schools in Washington, partly at the ex- 
pense of the general government, has fur- 
nished an excellent model for the whole 
South. But all these influences, together 
with the friendly encouragement of Northern 
teachers, have been but a small element iu 
this vast undertaking of the orgauization of 
the Southern common school, which is even 
more truly the work of the Southern people, 
unaided from abroad, than the establishment 
of the Western public scliool has been the 
work of the people of the West. 

Eor three years past nay own time has 
been engrossed by travels, studies, and labors, 
largely bearing on the present condition of 
the public school in the Southern States. I 
have done a good deal of work in twelve of 
these States, and think I understand prettj^ 
well what is going on in all of them. Their 
schools range from two or three months, in 
Louisiana, to five mouths, in the country in 
Virginia, and in many localities the school 
goes on for a longer time by private contri- 
bution. In all the larger cities, and in many 
smaller towns, the graded school is estab- 
lished for both races, and, in many cases, 
handled with great ability, by the best meth- 
ods, for eight or nine months of the year. 
In every State the County Institute for the 
training of teachers; in several the Summer 
Normal Institute of several weeks' duration, 
and in some the proper State Normal School 
for white and colored pupils are established. 
Outside a certain class of fossil and antiquat- 
ed pedagogues, and the usual drift of incom- 
petent youth working for pay, these schools 
are taught by the choice young people of 
both races. A better class of people, more 
earnest, more determined to improve, more 
self-denying, workin? on wages painfully 
and sometimes pitifully inadequate, cannot 
be found in any Christian land than the ma- 



jority of the public-school teachers of the 
South. The State Superintendents of Edu- 
cation, and many of the city and county su- 
pervisors, are the same sort of people as our 
leading educators in the North. With oc- 
casional exceptions, I believe school funds 
are honestly and economically applied, and, 
in all but two Slates, divided with reason- 
able fairness among all the children. It is 
not possible to give the average colored 
child as good a school as the white child; 
because he cannot take it; but the colored 
public schools are every-where improving, 
and are hindered as much by the ignorance 
and jealousies of their own people as by any 
other cause. The charge that the Southern 
public schools, except in very occasional in- 
dividual instances, are schools of disloyalty, 
I know to be untrue. The attempt to pub- 
lish series of sectional or even Southern 
school-books has broken down, and the 
Northern educational "drummer "is on the 
heels of eveiy school trustee and superior 
teacher from Delaware to Texas. Our 
Northern summer schools are crowded with 
these teachers, and thousands more would 
come if they had the money. 

In short, the Sout.hern common school is 
the American common school in all respects, 
save its bitter need of more money, longer 
sessions, and more thoroughly-trained teach- 
ers. It has already saved thousands of the 
children of respectable white people from 
ignorance and, for the first time, brought 
the lighted candle of knowledge to other 
thousands of homes where mental darkness 
brooded before. Its graduates are not the 
lazy and shiftless, but the superior, skilled 
working class in all their communities. 
And if any man, however eminent, honest, 
or Christian, declares that these schools are 
godless, immoral, or even unmoral, I must 
be pardoned for telling him that he does not 
know what he is talking about. If any 
body can look at the colored children and 
youth of Washington, graduates of the public 
schools, and contrast them with the awful 
crowd of untaught Negro humanity that 
swarmed the streets of any Southern city 
before the school-mistress came in ; or will 
compare the white school-children of Atlanta, 
Richmond, and Savannah with communities 
where ignorance still prevails ; and will then 
deliberately prefer this charge, I can only 
say his make-up is so different from my own 
that there is no common basis for an argu- 
ment in the premises. And I would remind 
my objector, on this ground, of tlie fact that 
there is one plot of '-holj^ ground" in every 
Southern community, where the whisky bot- 
tle, the smtitch of tobacco, the pistol and 
knife, profane and obscene speech cannot 
enter, by common consent; and that spot is 
the school-house and lot, public even more 
than private and collegiate, established 
by the Southern people within the last fif- 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR. 



1G3 



teen years. Besides this, the whole subject of 
tlie superior and industrial education of the 
col'>red people is being- debated in every 
SoMihern communii_v. Tlie State and tiie 
Church are both beginnin.? to move on lines 
of advance. And in all Souihern cities there 
is a hopeful movement for the jesthetic and 
tlie higher industrial training proplietic of 
valuable results in the near future. 

Thus, while the North and the nation have 
been at work, chiefly on the lower side of this 
vast educational South m problem, during the 
past twenty years, spending perhaps ¥50,- 
000,000, a large part of it for the elementary 
training of tiie colored people, and testifynig 
their ccntidence, respect, a'ld faith that the 
South will appreciate th<'ir work; this con- 
fidence, respect, and faith nas not been mis- 
placed. The Southern people have responded 
to this inagniHcent demonstratiou, nut by 
flinging up tlie hat in apphiuse so much as 
by tai<ing ofE the coat and working, at the 
otJier end of tlie problem, as no other people 
ever wrongiit before. The result is that, 
durmg these memorable years, the Southern 
people havj not only restored their sec- 
ondary and liiglier education to a con- 
dition, in some respects better than before 
1860, but have also established in every 
State tiie American system of public in- 
struction, and committed themselves to its 
support, according to their abilicv, in every 
grade. It is impossible to esiimate the 
money investment in this enterprise during 
all these years. Last year the Souili paid 
not less than $15,000,000 for education, and 
this year tlie sum will be increased. At 
least as much money and far more labor has 
been given by the South, out of its poverty, 
than by the North and the nation, out of 
their abundance, for Southern education 
since the war. More than ^50,000,000, 
meaning to that people many hundred niill- 
ious, judged by Northern standards, has 
thus been laid upon tne altar of the chil- 
dren's hope. 

And now the traveler through the Sonth- 
"land liuds himself every- where in the pres- 
ence of an educational revival as marked as 
in New England in the days of Horace 
Mann. And the blessedness of this revival 
is that it is bringing together the children 
and youth, their teachers, the j'ounger 
parents, and tlie more thoughtful people of 
North and Soutli, as no movement in the 
poliiical, the ecclesiastical, or even the indus- 
trial sphere of national life can possibly suc- 
ceed in doing. It is easy enough lor stal- 
warts, sectarians, sectionalists, and soreheads 
of all descriptions to find food for denuncia- 
tion and gloomy tbreboding in Southern so- 
ciety; and our Northern municipal life, to 
say noihing of certain ugly tendencies in 
other regions of society, will still provoke 
the retnrn tire of the diminishing Southern 
"old guard" that holds the tort agauist tlie 



North and the nation. But the time has 
come when, in behalf of the children, all 
Christian men and women should call a halt 
in such recriminations, and hold counsel to- 
gether in the interest of that education of the 
head, the heart, and the hand which can 
alone make us one. For twenty momentous 
years the American people, in sixteen South- 
ern States, have been laying the foundations 
and raising the opposite walls of the massive 
temple of the New Education. While the 
North and the nation have been toiling, on 
th" one wide, " all orders and conditions " of 
Southern men and women have worked, ac- 
cording to ilieir light, each on his own angle, 
but all on some section of the mighty build- 
j ing where the children shall be gathered in. 
I That these workmen have sometimes mis- 
taken the beat of rival hammers and tlie 
I clink ()'' rival chisels around tlie corner for a 
new tramp of hostile forces, is not surpris- 
j ing. But one thing will be not only surpris- 
i ing but disgraceful and disheartenmg beyond 
compare ; if, when these rival workmen 
have really built up the walls and met each 
other around the dome that crowns their com- 
mon work, they should fall out, fling their tools 
at each other, and fight over the miserable 
wrangle of precedence to the bitter end ; while 
they should be clasping each other's hands 
and running up the old flag with prayers 
and songs of dedication and ringing shouts 
of joy as of a people whose most devious 
ways have been along providential paths; 
all ascending to the summit of a nation's 
liope and a new trintnph for the human race. 
But all that has been done, on the whole 
so well done, is only the overture to the 
mighty wo k of educating the whole people, 
to which tiie South is now waking up. Our 
Southern friends are fortunately gifted with 
a boundless faculty of hopefulness in all mat- 
ters pertaining to their own future. It will 
be fortunate if a laudable satisfaction at their 
present achievements does not blind them to 
the fact that, after all, this prodigious co- 
operative effort of the past twenty j'ears has 
barely placed on the ground the macliinery 
for educating the coming generation, while 
the work to be done is so vast as to be al- 
most appalhng. Massachusetts began to 
educate her people two hundred and fiity 
years ago, and has stuck to it more persist- 
ently than any civilized people. Yet, to- 
day, there are nearly a hundred thousand 
people in Massachusetts unable to read and 
write. Only a practiced school man can es- 
timate the terrible obstinacj'' of chronic ig- 
norance ; how it fights and runs away, and 
skulks and shirks to escape detection ; and, 
when " brought to the book," goes through 
another dodge of masquerading through all 
the phases of sham knowledge ; and how 
short a time is required for a generation to 
lose its grip and begin to revert to its old 
estate ! The South will do well to turn a 



164 



CHBI8TIAW EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



deaf ear to all educational flatterers and op- 
timists for the next half century, and pay 
good heed to what its own wisest men and 
women are all the time telling it: that the 
enormous work of instructing its wliole peo- 
ple, even in elementary knowledge and men- 
tal discipline, is only begun, and that it needs 
a redoubled effort at home, with all legitimate 
help from the Norih and the nation for a 
generation to come, to do the work which 
patriotism, Christianity, and a wise self-in- 
terest demand. 

The first point to be aimed at is to get the 
children actually into school and extend the 
term of Instruction, in the country districts, 
to at least six months in the year ; while the 
city and village graded scliool should be 
sustained at least eight months. The Super- 
intendent of Instruction for Kentucky re- 
ports that one third the children of that 
State are in no school, and great numbers of 
the public schools are thoroughlj^ inefficient. 
It is doubtful if one half tlie cliiidren of North 
Carolina are receiving even three months of 
reliable schooling. Louisiana, Florida, and 
Arkansas are even worse ofE, and all the 
Gulf States but little better. housands of 
ignorant people are keeping their children 
out of school for the pittance obtained for 
their work, and vagrancy and absenteeism 
from the school-house in the open country 
greatly impair the value of the schools. Too 
many unbelievers are filling the country 
\\'ith the absuid cry that schooling makes 
the Negro lazy, and that the ignorant work- 
man is only reliable. But the fact is, that, 
out of certain favored localiiies, chiefly in 
towns, tne experiment of thorough, continu- 
ous, intelligent schooling has never yet been 
fairly tried on these dense masses of white 
and colored ignorance. A poor school, poorly 
attended, badly taught, neglected by the 
superior people of a community, is a hot-bed 
of many vices. When the South succeeds 
in getting her illiterate millions actually in 
range of the educational forces tiiat make up 
the American system of education, it will 
realize that such training will treble its in- 
dustrial power and lift up the whole base- 
ment story of its life into the life and warmth 
of modern times. 

But two conditions are necessary for this 
achievement. Tiie first is a resolute deter- 
mination, in every Southern State, to strain 
every nerve to increase tlie amount of money 
appropriated for public schools. And es- 
pecially to establish the habit of local taxa- 
tion for education. At the most, $100,000,- 
000 may have been expended for every sort 
of education in these sixteen States since 
1S60. But the State of Massachusetts has 
expended nearly that sum during the same 
period. New York State spends $100,000,- 
000 in ten years. Cincinnati pays as much 
every year as the State of Georgia, and 
Boston more than any Southern State, with 



perhaps two or three exceptions. Our new 
North-west, besides its vast landed endow- 
ment, imposes the State tax, and then often 
shoulders a local assessment beyond any 
portion of the country. 

Second. If any thing has been proved in 
educational matters at liome and abroad it is, 
first, thai the Church licver succeeded in edu- 
cating a people; second, that the family has 
always failed more decidedly than tlie Cliurch ; 
third, that private enterprise never did more 
than educate a favored class; fourth, that in 
our country the common school, to be re- 
spectable, must be free to all ; fifth, that 
neither the nation nor the State Can be 
relied upon for an}' thing more tlian the most 
general supervision, encouragement, and par- 
tial support of the people's school ; sixth, that 
no community succeeds in educating its 
children until it faces the hard fact of local 
taxation, and trains itself to the persistent 
and generous assessment of all its property 
for the common good. The most dangerwus 
weakne&s of education tlirough vast regions 
of the open Southern country is the fact 
that the people of both races do not un- 
derstand this, and are looking to the State 
or to private benevolence and various other 
expedients to keep their schools alive. An- 
other valuable result of this habit will be 
the training of the Southern people in that 
local self-government which has been so 
effective in the history of New England. 
Already this result has been marked in 
many localities. The present year. North 
Carolina has passed a valuable law, empow- 
ering school precincts to tax themselves, 
and the people of Texas have indorsed a con- 
stitutional amendment proposing the same 
thing. 

Third. There must be a concerted efEort 
at the training of teachers suitable to handle 
tlie common school by improved methods. 
A great deal of the school keeping of all 
sorts in these States is inefficient and al- 
most xtseless from the lack of teaching skill. 
Just now the South has tlie best ma- 
terial in the world for good teaching; 
for the superior class, of both sexes, among 
the colored people, and the superior young 
women of the white people, are thronging 
this profession. But even this will not save 
the scliool unless tiiese young people can 
have, not only academical, but professional 
training. So far, the word normal school in 
the South is little more than a name for an 
academical grade of any sort. Even our uni- 
versities and colUgesfor colored youth, with 
a few exceptions, iiave given noeffective train- 
ing in the art of teaching to their pupils. The 
Southern people need skill in the school-room, 
especiallj'on account of the absence of many 
outside helps to the average child. The 
Peabody Fund has struck the key-note in 
giving nearly all its income tor the training 
of teachers in its own school at Nashville, 



EDUCATION iN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAlt. 



ifl:> 



in Sumner Institute, and paying tlie sal- 
aries of sk lied superintendents. The Slater 
Fund sliould g'ive no nione}' to anj^ institu- 
tion, for training teacliers. except on condi- 
tion of a tliorougli normal department under 
an expert, with a practice school annex. 
Every Southern State sliould make haste in 
some effective way to push on the training 
of teachers, and every Southern academy 
and college should establish a department 
for the same purpose. It is in the school- 
ing of such masses of children as are now 
brought into their classes that skill is espe- 
eiall}^ required, and it is not a moment too soon 
to begin the gigantic work which half our 
Northern States have not yet compassed, 
but which every wise sciiool man every- 
where knows to be a prime condition of 
success. 

Fourth. There is a great field for indus- 
trial education in the South, while there is 
danger that, in handling this complex mat- 
ter, great and fatal mistakes may be made. 
There are two specious un-Americau notions 
now masquerading under the taking phrase 
'•Industrial Kducation. First, that it is 
possible or desirable to train large bodies of 
j'outh to superior industrial skill without a 
basis of sound elementary education. You 
cannot polish a brickbat, and you can- 
not make a good workman of a plantation 
Negro or a white i^'noramus until you firsc 
wake up his mind and give him the mental 
discipline and knowledge which comes from 
a good school. The first thing that the illit- 
erate classes need every-where in our coun- 
try for their permanent industrial elevation 
is >ix months of thorough elementary train- 
ing in schools Ijandled by good teachers, for 
five or six years of their life, and only a 
generation so taught can ever learn to work 
in connection with the labor-saving agencies 
which are revolutionizing every sphere of 
human industry. Second, that it is possible 
or desirable to train masses of American 
children on the European idea that the child 
will follow the calling of his father. Class 
education has no place in our order of so- 
ciety, and ihe American people will never 
accept it in any form. Tlie industrial fram- 
ing needed in the South must be obtained 
by tlie establisliment of special schools of 
improved housekeeping and the various 
styles of artisan work that its new manu- 
factures w U open for girls, with mechanical 
trainiuii for such boys as desire it, and a 
general improvement of agriculture through 
local associations of farmers and their wives. 
This will open into larger provisions for the 
higher form of technical schools. And this 
training suonld be given impartially to both 
races, without regard to the thousand and 
one theories of what the colored man can- 
not do. But any attempt to recast the pub- 
lic school into a f--emi-indusirial institution, 
in my opinion, will fail of both the ends pro- 



posed in the present state of Southern edu- 
cation. 

Fifth. The time has come to call a lialt in 
the estal)lishment of new acideraies and 
colleges for both races until those on the 
ground are better endowed and made more 
etfective. Tlie educational scourge of these 
States now is the great army of broken- 
down people who are forcing themselves on 
the puljlic as teachers oi private and semi- 
parochial sehciols, witli no real qualification 
for the office of instructor. In moi-e com- 
muniiies than is known this wasteful prac- 
tice deprives the people of anj"- thing like 
tb.orough education, and fills the community 
with children and youth wretched'y prepared 
for the duties of life. There are now good 
secondary and collegiate schools in the South, 
enough to educate the people, if the people 
will give them fair suppoi't, and their com- 
munities will work persistently for their en- 
dowment. And with this should go on a 
general movement for the establishment of 
free libraries in every community. It will 
be a questionable advantage to teach a mill- 
ion Southern children to read if they turn 
to the dime-novel, the lower side of the 
press, or the horrible trash with whicli every 
railroad is flooding the country. Every 
school-house and church should have its 
cliildren's libra y, and every community its 
collection of books suitable for general read- 
ing (?pen to all. 

Sixth. The Southern people will do well 
to give every child the great American 
chance of a fair elementary education, and 
see how he will turn out. That is the only 
national, scientific, practical, or Christian Avay 
to educate a people. The opposite way is to 
predict, in advance, what any set of children 
cannot do, and then see to it that they have 
no chance given them to do it. And, just 
here, if my words could reach every school 
district in the South-land, I would say : 
Give no heed to this noisy crowd of North- 
ern educational cranks who are now filling 
the press with their preposterous, false, and 
silly denunciations of the American system 
of public schools The American public 
S'-hool has great defects, like every thing 
else, public or private, in the countr)'. But 
its defects are only those common to every 
American institution, and it is to be judged, 
like the American family, business, politics. 
societ_v, literature, and the Church, by under- 
standin? its better features, marking its direc- 
tion, and observing its spirit of progress. 
Judged in this way, our American education, 
of all grades, in the North, is fully abreast 
of &nj thing in the country, and is, perhaps, 
on the whole, more thoroughly alive to its 
own defects, and more earnestly striving for 
improvement than any other region of our 
national life. So I would saj'' to our South- 
ern friends — when Richard (Iraiit White and 
Gail Hamilton denounce the common sciiool 



16G 



CHBISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



as a failure all round; when ultra scientific 
experts ridicule it as superficial and mis- 
leiiding; when Bishop McQuaid declares it 
godless, immoral, and communistic; when 
Dr. Nathan Allen tells you that New En- 
gland manhood and womanhood are physically 
going "out the little end of the horn ;" when 
Zachary Montgomery and the crowd of jour- 
nalistic scribblers declare that the schools 
are the nursery of laziness ; when interna- 
tional novelists and literary lights sneer at 
our popular education as a nursery of vul- 
garity; when venerable college presidents 
and academical principals publish the high 
school and the normal school a failure — 
it will be perfectly safe lo turn a deaf ear, 
and to go on building up every sort of good 
school in the South that now exists in the 
North; for, while cranks die and go lo their 
own places, good schools abide. 

And out of this review of the educational 
outlook in the South comes to my miad the 
unanswerable argument for a wi^e, generous, 
and immediate policy of national aid for the 
people especially of a dozen of these States, 
against the appalling illiteracy which is the 
one great bar to their prosperity. In my 
view, this aid should be immediate and gen- 
erous; graduated with the sole view to 
stimulate the energies of the people ; kept 
sharply outside .sectarian, rehgious, and par- 
tisan politics; left to the State authorities 
for administration — of co\irse, under all pro- 
per safeguards; and supplemented by judi- 
cious continuation of private and Christian 
beneficence from the North, with a uni- 
versal effort to make it tiie occasion of a 
great revival of kindly feeling through all 
sections. I believe the time has ci)me when 
all this can be achieved ; but better wait 
longer than have any imperfect, partisan, or 
partial attempt that will fail and leave mis- 
understanding and new jealousy in its wake. 

Several results of such an act of eminent 
sintesmanship I am confident would be as- 
sured. 

First. The obstructive class in every com- 
munity whose greatest leverage now is in 
the acknowledged defects of the schools, 
would become a feeble minoritj^ as soon as 
public education took on the form of respect- 
ability and efficiency, wliich such aid would 
assure. 

Second. It would enable thousands of 
bright young people to obtain the elementary 
education at liome which would fit them for 
a successful term in the secondary or col- 
legiate school, and lay the foundation of 
professional success. Now the Southern 
academies and colleges are clogged with 
multitudes of students who have grown up 
with i.o elementary education, and are, 
therefore, unable even to use the oppor- 
tunities obtained by so much sacrifice and 
toil. A considerable per cent, of national 
aid should be given for the training of 



teachers by the most practical methods that 
can be devised by the school authorities of 
these States. 

Third. It will be a mighty encouragement 
and stimulant to local effort. Hang up a 
sum of money, to he obtained by any com- 
munitj' on the sole condition that it strains 
every nerve of home resource, and every 
public-spirited man, every anxious mother, 
and every aspiring and eager youth besets 
that community to do its best. There are 
thousands of neighborhoods in the open 
Southern countrj', and hundreds of litile 
villages and settlements, where such an offer 
would stimulate the people and, for the first 
time, bring them together in a hearty move- 
ment for the common education of their 
childrni. 

Such aid, continued for a reasonable time, 
would root the people's common school in 
all except peculiar communities, and educate 
rheir inhabitants to its permanent support. 
T have never heard of a community which 
has enjoyed a good common school for a 
term of years giving it up for any cause but 
such as would destroy every public institu- 
tion. The reason is, that a good public 
school is the most potent stimulus lo every 
other good institution. "While, in irself, it is a 
powerful agenc}'- for mental growth and in- 
telligence, a poteni disciplinarian in the com- 
mon n oralities, a nursery of industry and 
patriotism, it is. all the time, stirring up the 
family and the Church to new efforts, and, in 
a variety of open and secret ways, refresh- 
ing the social, industrial, and civic life of tho 
people. The American people know a good 
ihing when tliej' have it, and the Southern 
people can be trusted to take good care of 
the school thus rooted and confirmed by 
national aid, 

I leave to others the large and important 
sphere of argumentation that enforces this 
imperative duty on the ground of justice, 
political policy, Christian philanthropy, or 
defense against impending national calami- 
ties, more threateninsr, even, than any peril 
of the past. And I must be excused for 
taking but little stock in the gloomy pre- 
dictions and dismal apprehensions of many 
good people in all sections of the coun'ry 
in regard to Southern and national affairs. 
I do not think I have been deceivfd in my 
widely extended observations of the South- 
ern educational situation, or have been 
blinded by the uniform kindness of tlies-i 
people to the difficulties still to be overcome. 
I can understand that even wise men, view- 
ing Southern life from a local and limiifd 
angle of observation, can differ widely from 
me in their estimate; or, even, that, eminent 
educators and social philosophers may be 
oppressed by anxious doubts concerning the 
outcome of American society as a wliole. 
But, looking at this Repulilic along the line 
of historical perspective, it seems to me that, 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAB. 



167 



for the past hundred years, our new country 
hus been maaeuvering for position among 
the nations of the earth, and that now it 
stands before the world in an attitude more 
hopeful, with greater possibihties for a Chris- 
tian nationality, than any people in Christen- 
dom. I cannot discover any defect or danger 
in any section which will not yield to a true 
education of the head, the heart, and the 
hand, continued through a few decades, sup- 
ported by the abundant means, pushed by 
the united executive capacity, and sanctified 
by tlie Oliristiau spirit of our people. And, 
because I believe in this ; believe in the pos- 



sibilities of human nature; believe in the 
outcome of our American way of dealing 
witl) man; believe that xhe Southern people, 
eveu in its most illiterate regions, is at heart 
thoroughly American ; believe that all foreign, 
obstructive, and un-American classes will 
either be finally absorbed or cast out from 
American society ; believe that the vision of 
the fathers will be realized m the glory of 
the children, I have given my life to this 
glorious "ministry of education," and have 
come here to bear my own h\uuble testimony 
in the great enterprise in which you are 
embarked to-day. 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME TO NORTHERN TEACHERS AND 
MISSIONARIES IN THE SOUTH. 



EEV. CHARLES H. FOWLER, D.D., LL.D., 

Secretary of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 



MR. CHAIRMAN, Teachers, and Mission- 
aries who have been laborii.g in the 
South, Fellow-workers in the bonds of 
supreme loyalty: It is my privilege to bid 
you welcome on account of your noble work 
and heroic spirit — welcome from the hot 
season of your sweltering fields, welcome to 
this great Christian gathering, to this dis- 
tinguished center of religious influence, to 
this time of spiritual insight, to this health- 
ful retreat by the loud-resounding sea. 

I am expected not only to proffer you a 
welcome that shall invoke upon you ble:^sing3 
as numerous as the sands of the sea, and as 
wide as the bosom of the sea itself, but also 
to make brief reference to the great moral 
and religious principles that underlie your 
work, the environments where you are ap- 
plying those principles, and the results, 
actual and possible, that follow the applica- 
tion of those principles. 

I am not here merely to say pleasant 
words and deliver commendatory sentences. 
This would be a pleasant task, in which the 
impulse of my heart would be sanctioned by 
the approval of my conscience. It has so 
often been my task to stand for the minority, 
as advocate for needy causes, so often my 
duty to befriend " the tmder dog in the 
fight," that it would seem a strange experi- 
ence to utter only words of commendation. 

I must limit myself in such a luxury, and 
liandle rather the weightier matters of tliis 
work. As I look into your faces I am 
thrilled as in the presence of a divine 
demonstration of the truth and power of the 
G-ospel. Jostling so constantly against men 
who measure every thing by how it will 



advantage them, hiding when the sky 
threatens, and whining out to the passing 
storm, "We did not do it," never daring to 
utter one manly word for an imperiled cause 
or a wronged brother man, it is refreshing, 
it is inspiring, it is transfiguring, to look into 
the faces of men who, turning away fi'om the 
turmoil of the mart and shutting out the 
glare of the world, have gone down into the 
secret depths of their own nature, and there, 
watching their own convictions as they 
bubble up from the deep foimtain of their 
being, have listened to the still, small voice 
within, and have gone forth unostentatiously 
into the heroism of obscurity, into the soli- 
tude of ostracism, and into the anguish of 
desertion, for the sole purpose of teaching 
the ignorant, of guiding the wayward, of 
improving the imbruted, and of saving the 
lost. To meet such a company is to stand 
on the threshold of heaveu, and feel the 
powers of the world to come. 

We cannot but admire the soldier who, 
hearing the first tap of the war-drum, springs 
from the couch of his ease and the home of 
Ills comfort, takes a hurried farewell of wife 
and babes, and, arming amid the gathering 
gloom of the coming conflict, goes forth into 
the darkness to defend an imperiled cause, 
or die amid the ruins he is not willing to 
survive. For him historj'' records his deeds ; 
poets sing his praise; sculpture chisels his 
statue; patriotism emulates his examples; 
posterit}' piles his monument, and mankind 
cherishes his memory. It is in the deepest 
and best of our rich human nature to enrich 
ourselves by praising and emulating him. 
For we feel, with Lowell: 



168 



CHBiaTIAN EDUCATORS ZZV GOXmCIL. 



" Then to side with Truth is noble when we 

share her wretched crust, 
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 

'lis prosperous to be just; 
Then it is the brave man chooses, while 

the coward stands aside, 
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord 

is crucified. 
And the multitude make virtue of the faith 

they had denied." 

We are living in the golden age of raartj'^rs. 
For the last twenty-five years the blood of 
the race has run richer and tliicker and 
stronger than ever before. Men in former 
ages have died for liberty, as at Thermopylae 
and on the many fields of the Roman re- 
public. But Atliens was little more than an 
interior country-seat, and free Rome a 
modern city. Both combined could not re- 
sist some single States we could select. And 
the gulf between their soldiers and tlie citi- 
zens makes comparison witli this time almost 
impossible. Men have died for the truth 
under the persecution of tyrants. But, with 
exceptional and fanatical cases, death sought 
them in dens and caves and deserts; and 
they died because there was no room on 
the earth where they might live with the 
truth. Men have perished for an idea, as in 
the Crusades. But as a law they wandered 
like tribes, finding but little difference be- 
tween their successive camping-grounds. 
Leaving few comforts, they hardly perceived 
additional discomforts. Men have died for 
gold, as in tlie expeditions into India, to the 
New World, and to California in the early 
days. Every style of martyrdom has been 
produced in history, and often with great 
profuseuess. But for their number, for their 
ability, for their intelhgeuce, for the comforts 
they left, for the peace and quietness out of 
which they marched, for the elevated char- 
acter of their motives taken as a mass, all 
things considered, the heroism and spirit of 
this quarter of a century is not equaled in all 
the ages. There were single regiments that 
could man and brain all the governments of 
the earth, and all the civilizations of the 
world, from guiding the ships of State to 
creating a newspaper ; from changing the 
color of lilies by chemical baths to improving 
the breed of fish in their changing baths; 
from building a locomotive in the desert to 
operating a telegraph-office in a hollow tree ; 
from tiie engineering that could span almost 
any gulf, as Roebling hung a mile and a 
fourth of Broadway above tlie masts of the 
sea, to the skill that can polish the pivots 
of a chronometer till it can track the comets 
within two seconds to the century. These 
men, pregnant with all the possibilities of 
the race, went forth b}' the tliousand, by the 
ten thousand, by the hundred thousand, by 
the million, to die for an idea, for liberty, for 
justice, for fair play, for equal rights — went 



forth to take the bonds off and let a race up 
into light and liberty and manhood and ac- 
countability. We live in the golden age of 
martyrs. 

We are just where we can properly 
estimate their quality and fiber. The notes 
of martial music have faded from our cars. 
The canvas cities of the soldier have van- 
ished from our plains. The smoke of burn- 
ing cities no longer darkens the horizon. 
Rich harvests of cotton and sugar-cane grow 
on the fields that were plowed by shot and 
shell, and billowed by the graves of the dead, 
with nothing to excite or alarm or enrage, as 
we can to-day coolly estimate the spirit and 
glory of this age. 

It is pre-eminently an age of ideas. All 
the passage-ways up into modern life are 
doored by the daily paper and the New Testa- 
ment. No man who has not a free use of the 
key, the alphabet, can find his way up into 
the real forces that mold and fashion the 
races. The government steed that is now 
expected to carry, not trample, the people, 
has a curb-bit in his mouth. That bit is the 
'press. A rein runs from that bit to almost 
every hand in the land. If this noble steed 
prances or frisks too much, he is sure to feel 
the weight of some vigorous hand. This is 
a reign of ideas. The printing-press has set 
up a new monarch over all governments and 
over all kings, wlro puts up rulers and casts 
them down; before whose steadfast eye all 
shields dissolve and all helmets melt. That 
supreme ruler is Public Opinion, and his 
decisions are law. Absolutely nothing can 
stand against him. When Public Opinion 
pronounces an institution like slavery right, 
there is no power on earth to enforce enact- 
ments against it ; when Public Opinion pro- 
nounces a law like the fugitive slave law 
wrong, there are not armies enough in the 
land to enforce it. This is an age of ideas. 
The great conflicts are conflicts of ideas. 
Beasts fight with claw and fang, but men 
fight with ideas. Armageddon is the Anglo- 
Saxon skull. Dominion is to be determined 
by the back-hold and hip-lock of logic. The 
work of to-day is to mold public opinion. It 
cannot be resisted. It cannot be overcome. 
It must be created anew. It must be guided. 
This is tlie strong work. This is the deli- 
cate work. This is the highest field lor 
heroes and martyrs. To go down among the 
lowly, to sit by the stool of the untutored, 
and there, by patience and tenderness and 
all-loving ministrations, put a new light in 
the lusterless eye of ignorance, a new fire 
in the dull brain of stupidity, a new hope in 
the leaden heart of stolidity ; to pick up this 
new creation, set its face toward the future, 
lift up its brow toward the heavens, put steel 
into its sinews and a holy ambition into its 
blood, and thus to open a new future with 
new convictions, is to create a new king. 
To do this quietly and patiently, while prej- 



EDUCATION m THE SOUTH SINCE TEE WAR. 



169 



udice clubs you over the head, and malice 
stabs you in the back, and cowardice opens 
pitfalls beneath your feet, is unwittingly to 
enter into the first rank of heroes, and into 
the copartnership of redemption, by which 
we are permitted to make up a part of the 
afflictions of the Redeemer which are behind. 
Teachers and missionaries — such workers 
are the ripest products of sixty centuries of 
Divine instruction and nearly nineteen cent- 
uries of Gospel preachins:. 

Bishop Ames was invited to share the 
carriage of a German baron on the occasion 
of the great military review in Washington 
at the close of the war. Tlipy had a favor- 
able position for viewing the procession. 
Hour after hour tlie soldiers marched by. 
There rumbled the field artillery; there 
crowded by, with dripping sides and champ- 
ing mouths, the cavalrj^, and there tramped 
the unwearying infantry. At one time there 
passed a brigade newly clothed for the day 
— every uniform clean and beautiful, ever}'- 
bayonet and sword polished and gleaming. 
The drill was perfect. The men were at the 
top of their condition. Every motion and 
look bespoke the soldier. As they marched 
by the baron turned around to Bishop Ames 
and said, " Pishop, those men can whip the 
world." Presently there followed by in the 
procession some old veterans, just as they 
came from their long campaigns in the South. 
They were soiled and ragged. One man had 
one leg of his pants patched out by strange 
cloth ; another had no coat ; another had a 
tea-kettle strung on his gun over his shoul- 
der, anotlier had part of a ham on liis 
bayonet. So they represented the breaking 
up and utilities of the camp. They rolled 
along with an easy, swinging gait, chatting, 
liughing, occasionally imitathig some animal, 
giving a bark, or a howl, or a screech, yet 
keeping step and in line. As these men, 
with their tattered uniforms and tattered 
flags, went by, the baron sprang up and, 
throwing liis arms around Bishop Ames, 
said, " My Gott I Pishop, these men could 
whip the devil! " 

So it seems to me to-day, as I look into 
these faces that have been trying to illumi- 
nate the way for the lowly and the benighted, 
till thej^ shine like the face of the old He- 
brew deliverer, that nothing is impossible to 
these men. 

Brothers, as I look at you and see the 
winters of ISTew England in j-our blue and 
steel-gray eyes, and find the vigor and free- 
dom of New York and the great North-west 
in your architecture, and still discover the 
hot kiss of the Southern sun upon your 
cheeks, I am convinced that there is no 
longer any sectional South. That South is a 
factor of history. It is our South. It be- 
longs to the whole Republic. It belongs to 
Freedom. Liberty says: "1/;/ Maryland,''^ 
" My Southy 



This is an age of miracles as well as of 
martyrs. Changes in population surpass the 
changes by Alladin's lamp. New England, 
the real New England, that thiuk.^, and 
fights, and trades, and wriggles, and con- 
quers — this immortal, invincible New En- 
gland — has gone west of tlie Hudson and 
stretches away over the AUeghanies. It 
has seized the great valley beyond the mount- 
ainij. It has gone into the sunny Soutii, 
and the South has come up the great river 
and pushed out on to the great plains. 
The South is in Kansas in force. It is on 
Fifth Avenue in elegance. It is in Wall 
Street in power. It is enthroned and ruling 
in Massachusetts; New Orleans reigns in 
Boston. There is no sectional South. It is 
ours. We bought it. We paid for it with 
ten billions of treasure. We baptized it in 
blood — no mere sprinkling, but a genuine 
immeirsion. We have seeded it down with 
$30,000,000 worth of school-houses and 
ideas. It is vitalized by the throbbings of 
the national heart and warmed by the com- 
mon life-current. In God's good order it 
belongs to those who can make its soil pro- 
duce the largest liberties and the most 
cotton. 

Happy are we that it is ours; we may 
need it in the near future. Since the sur- 
render of Massachusetts and the threatened 
transformation of New England and Man- 
hattan Island into papal provinces, it is im- 
possible to forecast how great our needs may 
yet be. Protestant and native South may 
yet bring to us the chalice of life for the 
olive-branch of peace. Let us rejoice in the 
new South, the non-sectional South. 

We have great hope for the South. True, 
many of its old ideas and old convictions 
still remain, but the almanac and tlie tide of 
emigration into the West will soon neutralize 
their power for harm. The Anglo-Saxon 
will rule. Enlightened, he must rule in 
righteousness. Tlie North, the nation, by 
schools and tlie Gospel, must put upon the 
throne the 8,000,000 of poor whites, and 
teach tliem to love liberty and fair play. 
Then the colored man can have his rights 
secure, and be allowed to make his own 
future. 

Brothers, you went into the South to 
teach. There was much need of it there, as 
in many other parts of the country. You 
have had many branches of knowledge to 
impart. You have taught Geography until 
every body now knows that the United 
States is bounded on the soutli, not hj the 
Oiiio River, but by the Gulf of Mexico. 
You have taught Mathematics. It is now 
accepted that the whole is greater than any 
of its parts. The lad who enlisted in Louis- 
ville, Ky., and marched south-west for ten 
daj^s, and still camped in Kentucky, and 
wrote home to his father, saj'ing, " If the 
United States is bigger than Kentucky it 



170 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



must be awful bi^," lias learned some geogra- 
pliy and some mathematics. You have also 
taught Orthography. There are whole com- 
munities now able to spell war without an A, 
and pronounce it with an r. Last winter I 
saw a bright New Hampshire girl in a school 
in New Orleans teaching a class to pronounce 
" r." It is soraethit]g to rescue a lost " r." 
An old German professor, on his death-bed, 
hnnded liis glory down to his son, saying, 
" I have given my life to rescue a lost dative." 
"We are rescuing a lost '' r."' On that awful 
day, when word came of the assassination of 
President Lincoln, a friend of mine, a D.D., 
was on tiie train nearing St. Louis. Every 
body was excited and spoihng for a fight. It 
was before the great bridge was built over 
the Mississippi River. The passengers got 
out of the ferry into the 'buf>es. This D.D. 
sat near the end of the 'bus, next to an old 
lady. A stranger swung into the 'bus, and 
swaggered a little, till the umbrella under 
his arm struck tlie old lady in the face. This 
D.D. pushed it down with a jerk, knocking 
some packages from the stranger's arm. He 
turned round and said, "Whoh dahd to touch 
my pehson." The D.D. responded, " I did, 
and I can whip any man. to-day, Avho cannot 
pronounce 'r.'" A sailor at the otlier end 
of the 'bus said, "That is right; go in, my 
laddie, and if you need any help I'il sail 
down." It is quite worth while to teach 
this American people how to pronounce " r." 

You are also teaching Sociology, which in 
its last analysis reduces to two principles: 
First, the value of the longest pole in its re- 
lation to the persimmons; second, that the 
strong must help the weak. Natural science 
insists upon the fundamental law of "the 
survival of the fittest," but you have taught 
the obligations of the fittest. You have also 
tau2:lit Ethnology, that of one blood God 
hath made all the nations to dwell upon the 
face of the earth. You have crowned this 
magnificent round of sciences with the great 
Theology, that '-by tlie grace of God Jesus 
Christ tasted death for every man," including 
Negroes and poor wiiites. These great ideas 
are well planted in that Southern soil, and 
soon all the people can rejoice in their heal- 
ing shade. 

TJie growth of the South is marvelous. In 
considering this growth we must not forget 
the prejudices and hatreds and bitter feuds 
and wounded pride that the war inevitably 
left in its track. The people did not have a 
fair chance to exercise their sense. It would 
be more philosophical to wave a red blanket 
at a bull, and ask him to be judicial in his 
judgments, than to take a Southern people, 
just out of the last ditch, with their old slaves 
exercising autliority over tiiem., and ask them 
to strike the best and wisest policy at once. 
It is not in human nature. The nerves will 
leap and sting after the searing iron. The 
tlesn will crawl after the knife. The marvel 



is not that the South were vengeful, but that 
they are cooling and righting so rapidly. 

At the, close of the war hardly a percepti- 
ble per cent, of the colored people of the 
South could read. To-day over thirty-five 
per cent, can read the Bible. However bit- 
ter the pill, the South has allowed so much 
to be done. And to-day you can hardly find 
a leading man in tlie South that does not 
want the colored people educated. Not anx- 
ious to do it themselves, they are willing we 
should do it. They are not much nearer 
mixed scliools than many of the people of 
the North, but they are willing they should 
have their own schools. This is a mighty 
advance. 

In large sections of the South the colored 
man can work and secure fair compensation 
for his labor. This is not universal. But 
the South is marching to the front on tliese 
great questions of labor. Rocked, as we are, 
on the stormy bosom of labor strikes, it 
maj'- not be a favorable time to compare the 
condition of labor in the two sections. 

The colored man is having the best time 
with his religious nature ever known in the 
history of the country. In the decade from 
1870 to 1880 the population of the whole 
country increased 30 per cent., while the 
colored population increased 35 per cent. 
The communicants of evangelical Protestant 
Churches increased 50 per cent., wdiich is 20 
per cent, more than the increase of the popu- 
lation. But tlie colored communicants in- 
creased 137 per cent. Surely we can hardly 
ask for clearer demonstration that the col- 
ored people have at least had a fair chance 
religiously. This growth in religious life 
indicates a quickening of the intellect, and 
means that new forces are working in the 
South. With these increased liberties and 
activities there comes also increased pros- 
perity. In the old days, with slave labor, 
the South produced 3,000,000 bales of cot- 
ton per year Last j^ear, with free labor, 
she produced about 7,000,000. No rational 
observer of events can doubt that the South 
will soon rise to be a great, free, rich, and 
powerful people. Traveling through tlie 
South one is impressed with the vast stretclies 
between the cities, school-houses, and church- 
es, but these stretches are being broken up 
by the power of the new life. 

One of the principal native educators in 
North Carolina, teaching in the same school 
where his father and grandfather tauglit be- 
fore him — a school where a large per cent, 
of the children of the leading families of the 
State have been educated ever since the day.s 
of the Revolutionary War — has planted him- 
self squarely in favor of colored education, 
and encourages his pupils to enter this work. 
In the three great educational conventions 
of North Carolina last year he presented his 
views, and spoke as one having authorit}'. 
He said to the assembled teachers : " I would 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WJIi. 



171 



join with you in putting auy stranger into 
tae nearest horse- pond wlio would venture 
to tell us the truths 1 intend to utter. But 
we cannot afford to suppress tlie truih. You 
may call me Yanl<ee it' you will, but I have 
seen such enviroumeuts in Boston that the 
leading public-school teacliers receive as liigii 
as §5,000 a year, and women as high as 
$2,500 a year. Nuw, call it what you 
piease. If we can create such a state of 
the public opinion tliat teachers can be so 
paid, we shall be on the highway to pros- 
perit}'. I have seen whole States where tlie 
majority of the population are within five 
miles of a railroad depot, and hardly a fam- 
ily can be found ten miles away. If we are 
to become great and rich and powerful, we 
must use the means ; if we can imitate Mas- 
sachusetts in prosperity, I am in lavor of 
imitaiing her in the use of the means." The 
growth of the South iu ideas is something 
marvelous. In the future, when she has 
cleared her atmosphere, and is prepared to do 
well by new-comers, the tide ot immigration 
will turn into lier geuial climate rather than 
into the colder regions to the Nortli. She 
has postponed the uay of her power, but it 
will come. The South of to-day is a babe — 
.a small, puling babe — compared with the 
South of the future; and blesoed is the man 
who has a hand in molding her institutions 
and convictions. 

In a land like this, wliere there are no 
dominant sectional interests, where each part 
belongs to all the oilier parts, one cannot 
look toward the future without being awed 
by tlie maguiticence of that future. This 
country is to be as the theater for Anglo- 
Saxoa activities and for the Proiestaul relig- 
ion. As 1 loolc over the arc of the future 
the ages are rolled togetlier, and I see tlie 
untold millions of freemen, by the grandeur 
of their life, drawing all nations up to them. 
We are iu at the begmning of things. We 
ought to act like the fatiiers and founders of 
history, it is a great thing to be in at the 
founding of great empires. We venerate the 
memory of tae Signers of the Declaration of 
Independence. They had the opportunity 
for greaiuess, and seized it. We are also 
blessed withtue chance to nurse great events 
and forces. It seems but yesterday when 
G-eorge Washmgtoii made his way througii 
the wilderness to Pittsburg. Only 130 
summers have passed, yet how wonderful 
the changes, witn forests cleared and homes 
built to tbe far-off Pacilic. The two and a 
half millions have grown into 50, "00, 000. 
How great it was to have a chance to move 
these millions I Now, turn that short meas- 
ure toward the future, and what nave you? 
One hundred and thirty years hence, and the 
stars and stripes will float over a thousnnd 
million citizens, almost as many as liie entire 
population of the earth to-day. What a 
privilege to have a hand iu ibrmiug aud de- 



veloping the institutions of to-day I The 
6,000,000 colored people will be grown to 
150,00' 1.000, witti great universities aud re- 
nowned scholars, with statesmen and ruk-rs, 
with honors second to none known to the 
race. It canuot be a vain ihing to purify 
tiie fountain out of which such a vast stream 
shall flow. Brothers, be patient. With 150,- 
000,000 back of you, nothing shall be im- 
possible to you. 

The resources of this coiinrry are beyond 
computation. Take the population of India 
as a standard. While in iiuglaud a popula- 
tion of 200 to the square mile means a town 
or a mine or a factory, in India some agri- 
cultural districts rise to 985 to the square 
mile. That would give us 3,500,1.00,000, 
about three times the present population of the 
globe. Swing into the future as far as the 
landing of the Pilgrims is iu the past, and 
this continent will hold and feed thrice the 
present human race. 

We are in at the beginning of things. War 
must soon yield to the spirit in the treatij of 
Washinyton, by which the Alabama claims 
were settled. Intemperance must suonly 
fall beneath the awakened conscience of the 
people. Service from inventions will multi- 
ply. As England to-day has machinery 
working for her people equal to 19 men to 
serve and wait upon CjicIi man and each 
woman and each child in all the kingdom, so, 
soon, each American sliaU be served by ina- 
cliinery equal to tifcy servants. Brothers, ic 
has been a long process lo build up this 
Anglo-Saxon race, but it is well buiit, and 
has a future. 

Go back yonder to Britain. Away back 
in the dim traditional ages we find the Gaels 
occupying England. By and by the Leogrians 
ca>ne over from the eastern extremities of tlie 
continent, and drove the Gaels back into the 
mountains of Scdtland and over into green 
Erin. About 500 years later the Cambrians 
made a landing in the south of the island, 
and drove back the Leogrians. About 500 
years later the Britons crowded in, and sub- 
dued the Cambrians and Leogrians, and made 
for themselves a home and a future. About 
500 years later the Romans, under Cffi.-ar, 
established themselves on the island. About 
500 years later came the Saxons, and con- 
quered the laud. Then about 500 years later 
came the Xormans. under William the Con- 
queror, and subdued all that preceded tiiem. 
Thus one nation and then anotlier, one layer 
after another, fighting, struggling, sweeping 
over the isUind with sword and fagot, till 
they almost paved the wliole land with thrir 
fallen heroes, uniting, mingling their blood 
iu their veins and in their streams, rising by 
every conflict and by every new re-enforce- 
ment, they have succeeded in building up the 
mightiest civilizaticm known to history. 

By these weary and bloody processes this 
English-speaking people have been created ; 



1'72 



CHRISTIAN' EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



but they are created aud ready for use. Still 
we are iu at the beginning of things. The 
centuries are at our feet. The millions are 
in our liands. We can fasliion them for 
righteousness if our faith fail not. 

Yonder, in India, on the banks of the 
Jumna, stands the most beautiful and won- 
derful structure ever erected by man. It is 
most finely described in '' The Land of the 
Veda." It was ordered by the great ruler 
of Delhi, Shah Jehan, aud it was created by 
a French architect, Austin de Bordeau, in 
the second quarter of the seventeenth century. 
It hovers over the center of a spacious parte. 
It is approached through a gate- way of red 
sandstone, inlaid with mosaic and iusciip- 
tions from the Koran in white marble. The 
avenue from the gate to the tomb contains 
eiglity-four fountains, and a large marble 
reservoir bordered by rows of cypress trees. 
The songs of birds mingle with the rippling 
of the fountains, and the air is burdened with 
the fragrance of the rose and the orange. 
The Taj stands on a marble terrace thirty 
feet high. It is built of white marble. The 
dome, shining like a globe of silver, is sev- 
enty feet in diameter, and the golden crescent 
at the top is two hundred and seventy-five feet 
from the terrace. The whole of the Koran 
is inlaid in black marble on the outside, and 
in precious stones within. 

It is difficult to apprehend its richness and 
the vast outlay for its erection. Among the 
treasures of the wealthy you will find opals 
and rubies of a few grains' weight. But 
wrought into this wonderful structure are 
3,870 pounds of opals and 4,644 pounds of 
rubies. Woven about in the marvelous de- 
signs are 8,342 pounds of emeralds, and 
shining every-where are the 12,470 pounds 
of sapphires. Add to this nearly 39 tons 
(77.400 pounds) of carnelian, and 20,640 
pounds of turquoise, and 37,840 pounds of 
lapis lazuli, with 22 1-2 tons of agate and 
onyx, and the mind is lost in the immense 
values. These vast figures help our thought 
lip toward the $16,000,000 paid for the ma- 
terials, and the 140,000,000 of days' labor 
put forth in its ereciion. These vast figures 
dwindle into obscurity when one contem- 
plates its delicate finish and its breathing, 
spmtual beauty. The walls of the cenotaph 
are of white marble, inlaid with fiowers that 
look like embroidery on white satin. Thirty- 
five different kinds of carnelian are used in 
a single leaf of a carnation, and in one blos- 
som, not larger than a dollar, twenty-three 
gems are seen. A single flower contains 
three hundred different stones. Surely, this 
was "planned by Titans and built by jewel- 
ers." It stands to-day the wonder of India, 
that land of vast empires and ancient dynas- 
ties. The soft music of the flute echoing up 
through the hundred arched alcoves, and 
returning from the dome to the floor seems 
the finest aud sweetest of any complicated 



music ever heard on earth. One says, " It 
is to the ear whatthe building itself is lo the 
eye." It is a worthy human ambition to 
work one's life into such a structure, even 
though it is only a tomb. 

Brothers, as I look, another building rises 
before me. Its park is this continent. It is ter- 
raced up by the ancient mountain ranges. Its 
borders are washed by the tides of the oceans. 
Its fountains and reservoirs are rivers and 
lakes, inland seas. The materials for this 
edifice are gathered out of all lands. The 
great body of its walls and dome are of white 
Anglo-Saxon marble, first found on the North 
Sea. This is richly inlaid with the black 
marble from Africa. Then come treasures 
from every country and citj- under the stars. 
The large-brained German, with his indus- 
try; the long-headed, open-faced, silent Scot, 
v/ith his broad plans and enduring purposes ; 
the .sprightly, artistic Frenchman, with his 
treasures of acute science and his love of 
glory; the stolid, enduring Slav from awak- 
ening Russia ; the witty, hopeful sons of the 
heart from green Erin ; the free-born, hardy, 
liberty-loving men from Scandinavia; the 
aspiring Japanese, the uncomplaining China- 
man, the refleciing, philosophical Hindu, 
with the stoical sons of the wilderness and. 
the desert; from all lands and from all islea 
of the sea they come, and are wrought into 
this temple of liberty. Up and down all its 
sides, and over all its wide arches, inwrouglit 
by the faith and the patience of the saints of 
to-day, you can read the full Gospel of the 
Son oit God. While standing beneath its 
vast dome 3,000,000,000 freemen sing "Lib- 
erty and righteousness. The Lord God om- 
nipotent reigneth." 

Brotl ers, it is an ambition worthy of the 
immortals to build our lives into such a struct- 
ure, which is not a tomb for the dead, but a 
temple for the living. Let us emulate the 
patience of God, and do our work at our best 
— bring to perfection whatever we have in 
our pattern, whether it be the broad name of 
the King himself emblazoned over the great 
dome, or onlj' some hidden lily of the valley 
in some obscure corner, and we shall be re- 
warded by Him who guides not only the 
leaping lightning to its mark, but also the 
timid dove to her nest. 

Sometimes it seems so long to wait. We 
cannot see results as we wish. We forget 
that they are certainly coming. We seem 
to be toiling in the midst of hopeless con- 
fusion. In 1641 Evelyn visited Amsterdam, 
and went up into the tower of St. Nicholas's 
Church to note the playing of the marvelous 
chimes. He found a man away below the 
bells, with a sort of wooden shoes on his 
hands, pounding away on a key-board. The 
proximity of the bells, the clanging of tlie 
keys when struck by the wooden gloves, 
the clatter of the wires, made it impossible 
to hear the music. Yet there floated out 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINGE THE WAR. 



173 



over the sea and over the city tbe most ex- 
quisite music. Many men paused in their 
work, and listened to the chiming, and were 
glad. If may happen that in j'our watch- 
towers, where you are wearily pouring the 
music out of your life into tlic einpt^' lives of 
the lowljr, that the rattling of tlie keys and 
the lieavy hammers, the twanging of tlie 
wii't'S, the very nearness of the work, may 



all conspire to prevent your catching even 
one strain of tlie music you are creating, that 
far out over the populous city, full of weary 
souls, and far out on the eternal sea, the rare 
melody of your work blends witli the songs 
of angels, and is ringing through tlie cor- 
ridors of the skies. It may gladden some 
burdened souls here, ai;d sweeten even the 
rapturous music of heaven. 



3. RESPONSIVE ADDRESS. 



PROF. SAULSBUET, 

Educatiooal Superintendent American Missionary Association. 



I CAN think of no valid reason why I 
should have been called to respond for the 
veteran workers of the American Missionary 
Association, except that I am not a veteran. 

The velerans of any warfare are modest. 
It is a matter of comment that the survivors 
of Stone River and Clnckamauga, of Clian- 
cellorsville and Gettysburg, seldom speak of 
their exploits except it be to each other. 

And so, none of the heroes or heroines, 
who have carried the flag of the American 
Missionary i\ssociation for the last score of 
years, could stand here and sound their own 
praise. But I, a new-comer, a recruit, albeit 
honored with an officer's commission, may 
speak of that which I have seen. 

The great moving fact in Christian liistory, 
the great principle which lias given both 
force and guidance to the Christian world, is 
the idea of duty, an abstraction, an ideality, 
but never barren, always fruitful and efficient. 
It has not moved all men — thon.sands seem 
never to have felt its sovereign touch. It 
has moved some, through lack of wisdom, 
to excesses and follies. It sent the hermits 
into the desert and the friars to their cells, 
and kindled the fagots of tlie Inquisition. 

It has done its great work in and through 
a small minority of mankind, a chosen few; 
but, through the elect few, it has uplifted 
the world and brought forth all ilie greatest 
glories of the human race. 

It has sustained martyrs at the stake, has 
nerved the Savonarolas and the Lnthers, as 
well as the (Justavuses and Cromwells. 

And yet its greatest work has been in the 
silent, unobtrusive ways and walks of men. 
In Christian homes, in the burden-bearing 
of Christian parents and children; in the 
sacrifices of Christian givers and philanthro- 
pists, but, most deeply of all, in the patient 
missionaries of the Cliristian Cliurch, has 
this ideal of dutv, of loyalty to God and his 
law of love stiffened the sinews and strength- 
ened the heart of the world. 



Renan, the famous Orientalist and skep- 
tic, in his last little book, pays a beautiful 
tribute to the French priests who were the 
teachers of his youth. He says: "My tutors 
taught me something which was infinitely 
more valuable than criticism or philosophic 
wisdom: they taught me to love truih, to 
respect reason, and to see the serious side of 
life. This is the only part in me which has 
never changed. ... I have never departed 
from the sound and wholesome programme 
which my masters sketched out for me. I 
no longer believe Christianity to be the 
supernatural summary of all that men can 
know; but I still believe that life is the most 
frivolous of things unless it is regarded as 
one great and constant duty." But this 
ideal as it now lies in the skeptic's mind and 
heart, beautiful as it is, is but a dim and 
diffused reflection of that fire which glows in 
the heart of the Christian missionnr^^ 

Perhaps you have thought that the heroes 
were all dead and the patterns lost, that the 
Rolands and the Sidneys, and even the Jud- 
sons and the Martyns, were now only historic 
examples of a lost and no longer visible 
type. I tell you nay. There are men in 
our Southern land who, for a score of years, 
have shown a courage and a devotion 
equaled only by the martyrs of the Church, 
indefatigable as Jesuits, unyielding as the 
Puritans the}' are. 

There are gifted women there who liave 
spent their young womanhood and come to 
middle age in labors as self-denying as any 
iliat liistory records, sacrificing j'outh, healtli, 
society, marriage, every thing but duty, for 
the helping of lowl}' humanity and the serv- 
ice of the lowly Christ. 

I could name to you a score of these whom 
it is my pleasure to know, and before whose 
moral heroism I take my hat in hand and 
walk humbly. Meeting from the outset 
witli the bitterest prejudice and opposition 
from those, even, who professed the same 



174 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



name, braving obloquy and ostracism and 
personal violence, bitten sometimes by dogs, 
and threatened oft, with the torch and the 
shot-gun, the missionaries of our and 
kindred organizations have gone unflinchingly 
forward to prove and publish the capacities 
of the downcast race, and show to the Negro 
himself and all the world that mind is mind 
and man is man. 

And these men loved not simply the poor, 
defenseless freedman, but the whole people. 
And, as the Saviour of the world came to all 
men, and was received by only a few Galileans, 
so these men and women, going in His name, 
have been held, like the Christians in impe- 
rial Rome, as outcasts and enemies of society. 

But they have lived to see a brighter day. 
It surely is a brighter day wlien a Southern 
man, "to the manor born," can stand before 
a Southern audience and speak, as Dr. Ha}'- 
good did at Monteagle the other day. Said 
he : " In all truth and common sense there is 
no reason for discounting, in any respect, a 
white man or woman simply for teaching 
Negroes. It is utterly absurd. I believe it 
to be also sinful. . . . 

"Will some master in such fine knowledge 
explain just wherein it is verj^ nice to sell 
goods to a Negro, or buy from him, or to 
practice law for him, or to give him medicine, 
but a tiling abhorrent to teach him whatever 
he can learn that we can teach ? Of what 
shams we are guilty." 

This is not the slogan of fifteen years ago, 
nor of five years ago. Verily, to modify the 
language of the Rev. Jasper, "Tlie world 
do move." 

But these just ideas have not yet thor- 
oughly permefited Southern sentiment. It is 
only now and then that a man, standing forth 
like a herald on the mountain top, can speak 
thus. 

The veteran corps of the American Mis- 
sionary Association enlisted for life, or 
during the war, and the war is but half over. 
True, we have captured the outposts in our 
front. We have advanced our lines and 
thrown up heavy fortifications. Fisk and 
Atlanta, Hampton and Berea, Straight and 



Talladega, Tongaloo and TiUotson, Avery 
and Le Moyne, Emerson and Beach, Wil- 
mington, are our strong forts and heavy 
batteries, laid in solid masonry and manned 
with skilled artillerists. Earth-works and 
rifle-pits are not wanting, with thousands of 
newly -trained cadets out on the skirmish line. 
Our allied armies, whose war secretaries 
have graced this platform to-day and yester- 
day, have their great lines and fortresses. 

It is only the warfare against ignorance 
and sin, waged under the banners of ihe 
Lord, bright with their inscription, "In lioc 
signo vinces." It is a winning fight, from 
which its warriors may some day rest and 
boast as he that putteth off the armor. 

But the end is not yet, and our forces, now 
in summer quarters by Northern lake and 
stream, with tlie coming of October will 
swiftly rally and again man the works. 
And they will return with stronger hearts 
from tlie contact with sympatliizing friends 
and from offerings like this wliicl) have been 
made to us to-night. In the name of my 
associates, I thank you all for this exprtssiuu 
of your great good-will. 

It is not all Northern people, even, who 
are willing to give us the hand of fellowship. 
Many, at least of those who have lately 
made their home in the South, have no word 
of recognition for us. 'I'hey have their own 
business interests to furtlier, their own social 
status to secure; they cannot afford to com- 
promise themselves by afiSliation with those 
who have the effrontery to sit at table with 
colored youth. 

But do not think that these missionaries 
are given to repining. Those who have 
labored longest and suffered most repine 
the least. In the gratitude and the progress 
of those they teach, and in tlie consciousness 
of the Master's smile, they find tlieir satisfac- 
tion and reward. But to yt n, our friends, 
we make the appeal that you slacken not tlie 
giving hand. The millennium has not yet 
come to the South-land, only a glimmering 
dawn. Tlie need is dire. The situation is 
still desperate. We have gone to the front ; 
but you must stand behind us. 



HISTORY OF THE EDUCATIONAL WORK OF THE AMERI- 
CAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.* 



BY EEV. M. E. STRIEBT, D.D., 

Corresponding Secretary. 



THE honor of founding the first school for 
the Freedmen belongs to the American 
Missionary Association. That school was 
opened at Hampton, Va., where, under shel- 



ter of the guns of Fortress Monroe, the 
escaping slaves first found protection as con- 
trabands of war. There these people, though 
safe from the grasp of their old masters, 



* Ee.irl at National Education Asse^nb^-, 1"S2. 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAB. 



175 



were without money or work, and were in 
danger of starving. Tlie Association sent a 
minister of tlio Gospel to see whiit could be 
done for them. He reached Hampton in 
tlie evening, and found a large number of 
colored people assembled in a long, low, old 
building, praying that C4od would send de- 
liverance to them out of their present dis- 
tresses. The minister, after listening to 
their prayers for a while, arose and told 
ihem that he had come from their friends at 
the North to bring them help. If the roof 
of that building had been open and an angel 
from heaven had descended before their eyes 
they could scarcely have been more over- 
jo}''ed or more fully persuaded that God had 
hoard their prayers. Provision was made, 
so far as might be, for their immediate wants ; 
a Sunday-school was soon opened in the 
house of ex-Pres. Tyier, and a few days 
later, Sept. 17, 1861, only five months after the 
first gun at Fort Sumter, that first day-school 
was begun. Its first teacher was Mrs. Mary S. 
Pealce, a very intelligent Christian woman, 
who represented the white and the colored 
races, and who had, in someway, obtained an 
education before the war. That spot on 
the Hampton Roads, where that school was 
located, had witnessed (two hundred and 
forty-one years before) the entrance of the 
first slave-ship into the line of the American 
continent. That ship brought to our land 
slavery and aU its woes — the curse that cast 
its baleful blight over the South, that stirred 
up enmity between the two sections of the 
country, which it aggravated into direful 
civil war, amid wliose thunderings and 
lightnings and earthquakes it was itself 
overwhelmed. That school on the Hampton 
Roads, the harbinger of all the freedmen's 
schools that followed, was the morning-star 
that heralded the dawn of knowledge and of a 
pure Gospel for the colored race in America, 
and that is destined to shed its effulgence 
over benighted Africa. 

The beginning thus made was followed 
early next year by schools opened by tJie 
Association in tlie old Court-house at Hamp- 
ton, and also at Norfolk, Newport News, the 
Port Royal Island, Washington, D. C, and 
Cairo, 111. The next year, 1863, was in- 
augurated by Pre.s. Lincoln's immortal Proc- 
lamation of Emancipation. The Association 
followed this great act by an enlargement of 
its work. Its day-school at Norfolk num- 
bared twelve hundred daj^and eight hundred 
night scliolars. In the vicinity of Noifolk 
were the mansions and plantations of some 
of the aristocratic families of Virginia, but 
when our army occupied Norfolk these fam- 
ilies found it convenient not to be at home. 
As the plantations were abandoned, the gov- 
ernment permitted the Association to open 
schools in a number of tliese mansions — that 
of Gov. Wise being one. As the Governor 
had declared before the war that the way to 



meet abolitionists was with "Dupont's best 
and cold steel," as lie had lianged John 
Brown and promptly joined in the rebellion, 
he must have experienced a vigorous degree 
of surprise, at least, when he learned that 
Yankee abolitionists were teaching a Negro 
school in his own house. 

The 4th of Ju]y, 186:^, greeted the nation 
with the surrender of Vicksbnrg, and 
opened up the Mississippi River and the 
country adjacent. The colored people, fol- 
lowing in the wake of the army, were con- 
gregated in vast camps, and thither the As- 
sociation sent its teachers, starting schools 
at Columbus, K.y., Memphis, President's Isl- 
and, and Camps Fiske and Shiloli. Thus, aa 
the guns of the array liberated the slaves, 
the Association came to enlighten — the rain- 
bow following the storm. 

At the end of tiie war, in 1865, the As- 
sociation had enl sted the sympathies of the 
people on both sides of the ocean, and had 
greatly enlarged its work, so that its receipts, 
which were only $65,000 for the year before 
the war, reached $250,000 for the year after 
the war, and its teachers sent to the freed- 
men in 1866 numbered 320. These teachers 
deserve special mention. Most of them were 
ladies, and were from the best Christian 
families of the North; man}"- of them had 
won distinction in the best schools there, 
and, in the spirit of the highest Christian 
self-sacrifice, tiiey left honored social posi- 
tions, the comforts and embellishments of 
refined homes, and gave themselves, some- 
times without compensation, and always with 
very meager salaries, to the privations, os- 
tracism, and danger of their new position. 
.-Vll honor to these heroic, consecrated Chris- 
tian workers! 

Without following the details of the work 
of the Association in the line of common- 
school instruction, it may suffice to say, that 
it sent forth its greatest number of teachers 
(532) in 1868, in the gloomy days when An- 
drew Johnson ruled in Washington and the 
Kuklux ruled in the South. The teachers 
were often tlireatened, mobs sometimes sur- 
rounded their dwellings, and one of their 
number was at length deliberate!}^ murdered. 
But their faith and courage never failed, and 
they pursued tlieir work heroicallj' and suc- 
cessfully. 

But the progress of the pupils in the 
schools, and the provision made in the States 
for popular education — tliough this latter 
was more in the promise than in the fulfill- 
ment — made it plainly' the duty of the Asso- 
ciation to establish scliools of higlier grade, 
and of a more permanent character. The 
plan for this purpose, largelj^ now realized, 
has been to plant in all the principal South- 
ern States schools of high grade, introduc- 
ing into them normal tpacliing, and as rapidly 
as needed college and theological instruction, 
the object being especiallj'- to prepare teach- 



17fi 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IW COUNCIL. 



ers of schools and preachers of the Goppel. 
Such higher institutions have been established 
at Berea, Ky., Hampton, Va., Na'^hville, 
Tenn., Atlanta, Ga., Talledega, Ala., Tonga- 
loo, Miss., New Orleans, La., Austin, Texas, 
and, to complete the list, land has been pur- 
chased for one at Little Rock, Ark. Inter- 
spersed among these, and in greater number, 
are normal and graded schools, located at 
■Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Macon, 
Memphis, etc., — into one of these we intend 
to introduce kindergarten instruction. Be- 
sides these we sustain in whole or in part 
man}'' primary scliools. These institutions 
and schools may thus be summarized : Char- 
tered institutions, 8 ; graded or normal 
schools, 11; other schools, 35; total, 54. 
Whole number of teachers among the Freed- 
men for the current year, 319; students, 
8,884. I said the object of the higher and 
normal schools was for the training of teach- 
ers and preachers, but we do not forget the 
needs of preparation for the callings and du- 
ties of practical life. Hampton Institute and 
Talladega and Tongaloo Colleges have Indus 
trial departments; all our boarding-schools 
give the girls training in domestic work — 
washing, ironing, cooking, sewing ; many 
otiiers aiford instruction in sewing and house- 
hold duties, and one adds training in nursing ; 
a kindergarten is to beestabhshedin Atlanta, 
and we intend to try the experiment thor- 
oughly. 

Perhaps T cannot give a better view of 
the aim and spirit of the Association than 
by a brief sketch of the planting and growth 
of a few of these higher schools. 

I introduce Berea College, Ky., first, be- 
cause it had a history, as an abolitionist 
institution in a slave State before the war, 
which has some bearing on its future course 
as a school where the two races study to- 
gether. That earlier school was established 
in 1857 by the intrepid John G. Fee, the son 
of a Kentucky slave-liolder, educated at the 
North for the Gospel ministry, converted to 
antislavery views, which he unflinchingly 
proclaimed, and for which he was disinherited 
by his father. Returning to the scenes of 
his youth as a missionary of this Associa- 
tion, in 1848, lie organized two white churclies 
and the school at Berea on an antislavery 
basis. As might have been anticipated, he 
encountered severe opposition, and was re- 
peatedly assailed by mobs. On one of tliese 
occasions he and a brother minister were 
dragged to the woods, where his companion 
was severely whipped on the naked back 
Avith lieavy sycamore rods, and was so much 
injured that he could not walk the next daj-. 
Mr. Fee was then assured that he should 
receive five times as many unless he would 
promise to leave the country. He firmly 
declined and knelt to receive the blows, but 
at that moment some one in the crowd said, 
" Don't strike," and the mob dispersed leav- 



ing Mr. Fee unharmed. The teaciiers and 
colonists at Berea were at length expelled 
from the State. But at the close of the war, 
in 1866, they returned, and the school was 
re-opened and black pupils admitted. This 
created great excitement, and all the scholars 
left except thirteen. But the teachers were 
firm. Slavery had been conquered, but its 
chief ally and supporter, caste — the curse of 
society here and the foe of Cliristianity in 
India, China, and other mission fields — 
was still in arms. These teachers believed 
that in America the battle must be fought 
against the one as well as the other, and they 
had the triumphant distinction of having 
dashed across the color-line, and of having 
won a marked victory over caste. The pupils 
in Bt rea College are now nearly equally di- 
vided between both races, and the school 
enjoys the favor of both blacks and whites 
throughout the whole region ; the vevj peo- 
ple who once persecuted now applaud. 

Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn., was 
founded in 1866, was located in some old 
hospital buildings, and remained there until 
their rotting walls and timbers admonished 
the inmates that more permanent quarters 
must be obtained. In this emergency God 
raised up George L. White and his company 
of Jubilee Singers. These slave children, 
with their sweet voices and the touching 
rend' ring of the old plantation songs, melted 
the hearts of men and women in this conn- 
try, and kings and queens in the Old World 
applauded and shed tears of generous sym- 
pathy. Architecture is said to be frozen 
music, and the songs of these ex-slaves have 
been solidified into the tasteful and commo- 
dious Jubilee Hall, where the children of the 
slaves may find a Christian education. 

The school at Hampton, Va., is the out- 
growth of that first freedmen's school. The 
first purchase of land for the Industrial De- 
partment was made in 1867. The institu- 
tion was incorporated in 1870, and under 
the energetic and wise management of Gen, 
Armstrong it has become one of the most 
successful schools in the land. Its indus- 
trial department embraced both agriculture 
and the mechanic arts. The agricultural 
rests on the basis of seven hundred acres of 
land which is used for farming, gardening, 
fruit and stock raising, and the making of 
brick. Its cattle are in part sheltered in a 
barn costing $6,000. The mechanical opera- 
tions are accommodated to some extent in 
the building styled the "Huniington Indus- 
trial Works," costing $20,000, run by a Cor- 
liss engine worih $4,000, and within that 
building are a saw-mill and other related in- 
dustries; while elsewhere there is in part 
enumerated shoemakiug, tailoring, knitting, 
cooking, baking, and the printing and pub- 
lishing of a newspaper. The teaching and 
boarding departments find accommodation in 
Virginia Hall, (one of the finest school ed- 



EDUCATION m THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR. 



ifices in the State,) in Academic Hall, Stone 
Hall, Marqnatid Cottage — but why attempt 
to enumerate the village of buildings which 
is constantly growing! Indeed, so rapidly 
have they multiplied, tliat last year when we 
were called down there to la}^ the founda- 
tions in one day of two large buildings. Dr. 
Potter, of Grace Church, iST. Y., who was to 
lay the stone of the second building, and 
who at the time of beginning the service was 
asked to delay for a few moments on account 
of a passing shower, promptly answered: 
"No, if we wait. Gen. Armstrong will have 
another corner-stone ready to lay before we 
are done with this." 

Atlanta University early won a victory 
for the colored people by proving their ca- 
pacity to succeed in the higher studies — 
mathematics and languages. In 1871 the 
Legislature made an appropriation of $8,0iJ0 
to tiie University, and the Governor ap- 
pointed a Committee of ten persons to ex- 
amine the school. The Committee were 
mainly of the former slave-holding class, 
Hon. Jos. E. Brown, a former Governor of 
the State, and now one of its Senators, and 
confessedly a leading man of the South, be- 
ing its chairman. The Governor, in accept- 
ing the appointment on the Committee, 
frankly stated his reasons: "We held these 
people as slaves," said he, "because we be- 
lieved they were an inferior race. Tliej' can 
acquire the primarj^ studies, but will fail in 
the higher, and I am going to this examina- 
tion to prove that we are I'iglit." The ex- 
amination lasted three days — the first being 
in the elementary studies and quite satisfac- 
tory, the Governor remarked that this was 
just what he had anticipated. But, as the 
classes appeared in the Latin and Greek, the 
attention of the Committee was thoroughly 
aroused, and their wonder aa well; and the 
climax of astonishment and conviction was 
reached when the examinations extended 
into the matliematics. At the close of tlie 
examinations the Governor addressed the 
crowded audience, stating candidly the mo- 
tives which had induced him to come, but 
v/ith the magnanimity of a true gentleman 
he added: "I have been all wrong in my 
views. I am converted;" and the conclu- 
sion reached unanimously by the Committee 
was embodied in their report to the L^-gisla- 
ture, and from whicii I extract these words : 
"The rigid tests to which these classes in 
algebra and geometry, and in Latin and 
Greek, were subjected, unequivocally demon- 
strated that, under judicious training and 
with persevering study, there are many 
members of the African race who can attain 
a high grade of intellectual culture. They 
prove that they can master intricate problems 
in mathematics, and fully comprehend the 
construction of difficult passages in tlie 
classics. Many of the pupils exhibited a de- 
gree of mental culture which, considering the ] 
12 



length of time their minds have been in train- 
ing, would do credit to members of any race." 

Talladega College, Ala., was started in 
18G8, in a l)uilding completed uot long before 
the war for a wiiite school. A planter, who 
subscribed $900 toward its erection, set one 
of his slaves, a good carpenter, to work out 
the subscription. Tliis slave, as he toiled 
in the iiot sun, often said to himself, " This 
school is for the wliite children; but, 0! 
when shall our children have an education ?" 
When the war ended, the building had a debt 
upon it, and had to be sold. We bought it 
and used it for a school and for the chapel of 
a cl-.urch. That slave lived to become a 
deacon in the church, and to see his four 
children educated in the school — all of whom, 
I believe, have become cither teachers or 
ministers of the Gospel. Tliat old man ex- 
pressed his appreciation of the boon given 
to his people by saying: " I expect no greater 
change to come over me wlien I pass from 
earth to heaven than I felt when our chil- 
dren were allowed to get an education." 

I must be permitted a few words in re- 
gard to the sources of income of the Ameri- 
can Missionary Association. In addition 
to its ordinary and liberal receipts from 
churches and individuals in this country, 
it has received from Great Britain in vari- 
ous forms $286,000. The Freedmen's Bu- 
reau gave it $203,469. Of large individual 
donors. Rev. Charles Avery, a Protestant 
Methodist minister, gave it in the early days 
of its history $190,000; and in later days, 
Mrs. Valena G. Stone has given it $150,000, 
which have gone into large and commodious 
school buildings, mainly for girls, at Atlanta, 
Nashville, Talladega, and New Orleans; be- 
sides $30,000 for Hampton and Berea. All 
honor to the Christian minister who had the 
brains to acquire honestly so much property 
and a heart to give it away so generously; 
and all honor to the quiet and unassuming 
Christian lady who has planned so wisely 
and given so abundantly for the poorest and 
most needy of her sex. May her days be 
long in the land, and the blessing of God 
perpetually shine upon her! 

As for the future, we are engaged in tele- 
graphing, and mean to keep at it. A strange 
electric wire once connected America with 
Africa. The battery at the African end was 
charged with the electricity that came from 
the groans of dying men, the burning of vil- 
lages, and the capture of slaves; the noise 
that swept along the wire was the wail of 
the " middle passage ;" and the deliverance 
in America was the toil, the tears, and the 
blood of the slave plantation. Thank God ! 
that wire is broken, and the American bat- 
teries are all exploded. But a new sort of 
telegraphing has been started in America, 
with an entirely new set of batteries. These 
batteries are schools and colleges and 
churches, and they are charged with the 



CHRISTIAN EDUCAT0B8 IN COUNCIL. 



electricity of learning and Gospel truth; tlie 
wires are run into every city and hamlet in 
the South ; and last of all, a line has been 
stretched again over tlie seas to Africa. The 
hum of the message along that line is the 
song of the returning sons of Africa, and 
the deliverance there is the preaching of the 
Gospel to the benighted and degraded. The 



American Missionary Association is in that 
business. Its batteries and wires are numer- 
ous, well-appointed, and in good running or- 
der; and it proposes, in connection with all 
other well-organized companies, to pusli the 
work till the electric spark of light and love 
shall reach every heart in America and 
A frica. 



5. EDUCATIONAL WORK AMONG THE FREEDMEN BY THE 
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



EEV. JOHN BRADEN, D.D., 

President Central Tennessee College, Nashville, Tenn. 



THE Methodist Episcopal Church was 
among the first to enter the work for 
the benefit of the freedmen. Her menfbers 
were patriotic, and entered heartily into the 
measures which were taken to suppress the 
rebelhon, and to save the nation's life. They 
were among the first to contribute to the re- 
lief of the contrabands. They would have 
proved false to the teachings of Methodism 
had they done otlierwise. The Church that 
was first to recognize ofBcially the existence 
of the government, and its authority, could 
not see the nation strangled without an ef- 
fort to save her from the destroyers. 
Hence, if the Church furnished her full 
quota for the battle-field, let her voice be 
lieard in favor of law and order — stood firm 
for the Union, she was only acting consist- 
ently with her antecedents. Ttiis same 
Church had always recognized the wrong of 
slavery, and had been inquiring for more 
than half a century, *' What shall be done 
for the extirpation of the great evil of slav- 
ery?" It would have been an everlasting 
dishonor to such a Church to be slow in 
reaching the class of people for whom prayers 
had ascended, churciies had been rent in 
stmder, families had been estranged, and for 
whose delivery from bondage hundreds of 
thousands of lives had been sacrificed, and 
thousands of millions of dollars expended. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church was early 
represented in the Christian Commission 
work among the colored soldiers, and in the 
camp schools of the freedmen. Her pulpits 
were open to the agents of the Freedmen's 
Aid Commission, and the contributions were 
most liberal. Her members and ministers 
were active workers atid agents for these 
general commissions. They were engaged 
as teachers in the work of instruction in the 
camps and school-houses which were ex- 
temporized for the purpose. This Church 



has had her representatives, both of the 
ministry and laity, heartily engaged in tliis 
work since it was possible to do so. When, 
in August, 1866, the Freedmen's Aid Society 
of the Methodist Episcopal Ciurch was 
formed, it was not from any special desire to 
get out of the undenominational work of the 
commissions, but to meet the growing de- 
mand for more specific work by the Church. 
Other Churches had found this n^ed, and 
had organized special Church work. The 
Friends were first in this field, the United 
Presbyterians in Ohio organized in 1863, and 
in the same year the Reformed Presbyterians, 
United Brethren, and one branch of tite 
Baptists. In 1864 the Old School Presby- 
terians undertook this work for missionary 
purposes. In 1865 the Congregationalists. 
through the National Convention, working 
through the American Missionary Associa- 
tion, began their specific Church work, and 
the Church (Congregational) was urged to 
raise a quarter of a million per annum for 
this purpose. In October, 1865, the Protest- 
ant Episcopal Church, at its Convention 
in Philadelphia, organized a Freedmen's Aid 
Society. In the same year the Baptists ap- 
pealed to their churches to raise one hun- 
dred thousand dollars, to begin their denom- 
inational freedmen's work. 

Tlie Methodist Episcopal Church entered 
upon its denominational work among the 
freedmen in the autumn of 1866. No mis- 
sion field was ever more needy, none ever 
appealed to the Church with such cogent 
reasons. Four millions of ignorant people, 
having the shackles thrown off with one 
violent convulsion, costing nearly the national 
life, and having all the responsibilities of 
citizenship thrust upon them, which seemed 
to manjj- to threaten the destruction of the 
nation, were stimulants to this work, which 
had never been so potent in any other mis- 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR. 



179 



sion work, in the history of the nation. 
Those more closely allied to the Negro were 
not prepared to undertake his training for 
citizenship and for freedom. They lacked, 
at that tune, the disposition and the financial 
ability to do this work. It was needful for 
the preservation of the nation that the ut- 
most that the churches in the North could 
be persuaded to do be done for the enlight- 
enment of this people, and preparing them 
to take an intelligent part in the sovereignty 
of this great nation. That some did not 
want the Methodist Episcopal Church, as 
such, in the South, w:'S quite to be expected. 
That her workers would meet with special 
discourtesy was natural. Old difficulties are 
hard to settle. Duty, however, dues not al- 
wa^'s permit the workers to choose the 
pleasantest fields of labor. 

The report of the first year gives the fol- 
lowing places where schools were organized: 
Manchester, Va. ; Lewishurg, West Va. ; 
Smitliland, Ky. ; Nashville, Murfreesboro', 
Spring Hill, Lebanon, Alexandria, Franklin, 
and National Cemetery, Tenn. ; La Grange, 
Newman, Griffin, Oxford, Jonesboro, Pal- 
metto, Grautville, and Hogansville, Ga. ; 
Huntsville, Ala. ; Vicksburg, Miss. ; New 
Orleans, Baton Rouge, Thibodeaux. Frank- 
lin, and Jefferson City, La. The second 
year's report, in addition to the above, gives 
schools at Hermitage, Edgefield, McMinn- 
ville, Elizabeth, Hickory Creek, Goodletts- 
viUe, Mt. Pleasant, Bueiia Yista, Waynes- 
boro', and Hendersouville, Tenn. ; Coving- 
ton and Rome, Ga. ; Decatur and Montgom- 
ery, Ala. ; Bond River and Edminton, K.y. ; 
Evergreen, Washington, St. Martinsville, 
Natchiloche, La. ; Weldon, N. C. ; Little 
Rock, Ark. ; Lancaster County, Va. ; Charles- 
ton, Sumter, Darlington, John's Island, Cam- 
den, So. Stephen's, and Guardine Station, 
S. C. 

In these eighteen months, for that is the 
length of the time the report covers, 59 
schools were organized. The first year 52, 
and the second year 72, teachers were em- 
ployed. The first year 5,010 scholars in 
school, and the second, 7,000. The fourth 
and fifth years' reports contrast quite 
greatly. The policy becomes one of central- 
izuig instead or expansion. The fuinh year 
the number of schools sustained was (in 
Tennessee, 17; Georgia, 19; Alabama, 3; 
Kentucky, 2; Louisiana, 6; Virginia, 2; 
Mississippi, 3 ; South Carolina, 6) 58, and 
110 teachers. The fifth annual report shows 
a reduction in the number of schools to 35, 
showing, not a decrease of interest, but a 
necessary ciiange in the form of the Society's 
work. In the beginning, tiie whole work of 
orgauizing and supporting schools for pri- 
mary work was a necessity, but seven or 
cigiit years of this kind of work witnessed a 
change of two kinds: 1st, The States them- 
selves undertook to do some of tliis primary 



work. 2d, Some of the colored students 
were able to do much of ihe work in the 
primary schools, and the people able to pay 
these teachers. Hence, the number of 
schools sustained by the Society' decreased 
in two years from 59 to 35, and afterward 
still more. The necessity for helping the 
freednien to help themselves was early mani- 
fest. The j'Oung people who were more 
advanced were put to work in the primary 
schools as teachers, and the white teachers, 
Northern teacher.s — "foreigners," as they 
were sometimes called, were gradually super- 
.scded in tlie primary and country schools by 
the better educated among the jfreedmen. 

As the Church was released from the care 
of providing white teachers for tlie commoa 
schools, the work of providing colored teach- 
ers became imperative. The primary schools 
in some of the central points were gradually 
transformed into normal schools, then into 
academies ; then came the high-sounding 
names of theological schools, colleges, and 
universities. But these changes were not S(S 
much of choice as necessity. In the prose- 
cution of this work, students wiih black 
skins finished, in due season, the arithmetic, 
and, what was perfectly natural, went to 
work on algebra, then geometry, trigonom- 
etry, conic sections, calculus. 'They studied 
Latin, and read Nepos. Cresar, Virgil ; they 
studied Greek, and read Homer and Demos- 
thenes ; then mastered the elements of nat- 
ural science, and Belle-^-lettres, and did all 
these just as if their bodies had been covered 
with a white skin; and having demonstrated 
that they had the ability, the Church went 
with them through the course, and said to 
them, Well done! The Church had said, 
at first, they must learn to read the Bible. 
The Negro did this, and then said. We must 
read Virgil. The Church said. They must 
know arithmetic; the Negro said. We must 
know how to measure and weigh cotton and 
corn, but we must measure the stars also. 
The Church was slow to say college and 
university, but the voice of intellect under 
the dark skin, and the voice of God, said. 
Let them go free ; free to roam the fields of 
science, of professional and general litera- 
ture; let them into the halls of science; let 
them scan the heavens with your telescopes, 
and the diatoms with your microscopes ; let 
them search in the crucibles for hidden mys- 
teries; let them peer into the musty tomes 
of the past; let them know the living pres- 
ent; let them know the laws of their own 
being and destiny, from Mount Sinai and 
Calvary; let them know the grandeur of the 
human mind, its capabilities and its des- 
tinies, and start them in the race to develop 
capacity, and to win the highest destiny — 
eternal life. 

The call came for workers in this field, 
and the responses were equal to the demand. 
Four years of conflict, with their revealings 



180 



CnRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



of the nature of slavery, and its influence on 
the material, social, and moral interests of 
the nation, had prepared the Church to sym- 
pathize with the freedmen, and also to esteem 
more highly than ever the fair fabric of our 
national existence. Christians saw how nearly 
this black Samson, grinding in our prison- 
house, had pulled down the piUars of our 
temple of liberty; and that, instead of being 
an enemy to national progress, he might be 
made a friend. iMultitudes leaped forward 
to aid in this transformation. They left 
homes of comfort, and sometimes of elegance 
and luxury, for the cabin, windowless and 
comfortless; churches, where worship was 
couducted intelligently and spiritually, for 
sheds and floorless houses of worship, where 
the great object of the preacher often seemed 
to be to rouse the emotions, and of the wor- 
shipers to shout, sing, jump, and have what 
they called "a good time." These laborers 
left the society of intelligent friends for that 
of the plantation hand, who had but little 
more culture than the mule he drove. They 
were exiled from the society of the educated 
whites around them, as if they had been 
fresh from a lazar-house; as if the work 
which was so higlily commended by th.e 
Lord Jesus as the crowning glory of his own 
blessed mission, "The poor have the Gospel 
preached unto them," was an unpardonable 
offense, worthy of all the indignities, insults, 
persecutions, and deaths which they could, 
or dared to, inflict. There was apostolic 
heroism in some of these workers, and, when 
threatened with the maledictions of their 
enemies, they remained at their posts, say- 
ing, with one of old, "None of these things 
move me." And wlien one fell others were 
ready to endure hardness as good soldiers. 
The prejudices of the white people made it 
necessary, in most cases, for these teachers 
to live among the colored people, and then 
they were most heartily cursed for being 
socially on an equality with the Negro. 
This subjected them to numerous hardships 
in this style of living, to which they were 
unaccustomed, in houses that had few com- 
forts, in society that had no other attraction 
than its willingness to learn something to 
make home more comfortable— to improve 
in their manner of living in' the family, to 
have better housekeeping, better govern- 
ment of children, more respect for marriage 
and its obligations, and more intelligent 
views of house piety and family religion. 
Many of these teachers found ^ a sweet solace 
in the fact tliat, thus isolated; they had bet- 
ter opportunities to learn the- inner life of 
the freedmen, and increased power to do 
them good. No doubt, many humble homes 
of freedmen to-day are thebetter for having 
had the presence and instruction of these 
self-denying Christian workers. In the fut- 
ure, when the smoke of battle clears away, 
and the noise of strife ceases, these men 



and women, mostly the latter, will be recog- 
nized among those who have exhibited the 
best traits of humanity in their efforts to 
bless mankind, and the history of the mission 
work of the Church will not "be perfect with- 
out mention of these true, self-sacriticing 
Christian workers. 

The people upon whom these teachers 
were to expend their efforts were exceedingly 
interesting. They had been for centuries in 
a Christian land, with a contradiction of the 
teachings of that Christianity ever before 
them. They had heard of " Our Father 
who art in heaven," and had been taught 
that God was as much their Father as he 
was the master's. They wondered wlij' 
one brother could own and use as chattels 
the others. They had seen the advantages 
of education through the bars of their prison- 
house, and were forbidden to acquire it. 
They had been pointed to the Cross as the 
place of cleansing for the sinner, as the 
source of comlort for the sorrowing, patience 
for the suffering, strength for the weak ; and 
multitudes of them rejoiced in this as their 
own experience. But this only increased 
their desire to know more of God, of Christ, 
of salvation. A people more hungry ibr 
knowledge was never known. True, it was 
limited, in most cases, to reading the Bible 
and lij'mn book, and to a little penmanship 
and aritlimetic. Many of the older people 
would be satisfied with ability to read, in a 
stumbling way, a few chapters of God's 
word. They had heard from their preachers 
something of the word of life, and ihey de- 
sii'ed more. In addition to this desire to 
know, the freedmen were teachable. Thej^ 
had but little to boast of, and they knew it. 
They listened to their teachers as little chil- 
dren, ready to hear, and generally to protit 
by practicing what they learned. If the 
education of the freedmen had been simply 
intellectual, it would have been something 
of a task ; but it had to do with their morals 
also. They had b>it little correct knowledge 
of right and wrong, and found themselves 
addicted to the practice of the wrong, be- 
cause it was more in harmony with their 
feelings. They were infants in morals, the 
physical dominating the spiritual. They 
had heard, " Thou shalt not bear fnlse wit- 
ness," but their practice was never to tell 
the truth if a falseliood would shield them- 
selves or their fellows from trouble. A slave 
airl was brought from Nashville to Kentucky. 
Her mistress had taught her to read the 
Bible. Her new home was to be diflerent 
from the old. She was sent to her room 
alone. She took her Bible and began to read 
its promises, and drew comfort and strength 
from its hallowed pages. Soon an old serv- 
ant came in and saw her, and said : " Missus 
sent me to ax you whether you can read o' 
no ?" " Yes," replied the new-comer. 
" Missus says if you can read she will sell 



EDUCATION m THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAB. 



181 



3'ou Souf; what sliall I tell her?" queried 
tlie old servant. "Tell her I diinno a letter 
in the book," replied the girl, tliorouglily 
frightened at the idea of going farther South. 
The girl was not sold, and the old servant 
who told me herself the story was consid- 
ered among the pillars of the Methodist so- 
ciety to which she belonged. "Tlion siialt 
not steal 1" had been thundered from Mount 
Sinai by the Almighty, and in their ears by 
tiieir masters, and impressed, in man}'' cases, 
oil their backs, if not on their memories. 
" Didn't we raise the corn ?" said one of 
them to me : " didn't enough of the corn in 
the crib, and of the meat in tiie smoke-house, 
to supply our w^nits, belong rightfully to us? 
If we failed to get enough rations to supply 
our appetites, could we not help ourselves 
to that which our labor had made?" This 
easiness of conscience in this case could 
easily be transferred to other cases, and the 
"Meum" and "Tuum" become very much 
clouded in the ordinary transactions of life. 
The Seventh Commandment they had heard 
of, perhaps, but its observance was rather 
the exception than the rule. There was no 
special guard thrown around marriage, no 
sanctity attached to the ceremony. It was 
simply a " taking up " with each other in 
most cases, sometimes by choice, and some- 
times a choice with the force of the master's 
will behind it. As a slave, his volitions 
were hedged in by a force which he feared 
and often hated. The self-control needful 
for a high state of morality is not easily ac- 
quired, and it is not wonderful that the 
freedmen did not possess it. To remedy 
this defect in them was, of necessity, slow 
work. The freedmen were poor. Their 
homes were without attractions. Their cab- 
ins often not good stables. The furniture of 
the poorest, and but little of that. Tliey 
had no tools or stock to begin work with. 
They had no capital, and but few friends 
who really stood ready to advise and aid 
them. They had opposition to their ad- 
vancement. Men were base enough to 
swear by the " Eternal " that no Negro 
should ever go to school in their neighbor- 
hood. Children have been met on their way 
to school and driven home by owners of the 
plantations on whicli their parents worked, 
school-houses burned, and teachers murdered 
or driven from the held. 

When we consider all the circumstances 
of the colored people as they came of slavery, 
their physical, mental, and moral debase- 
ment, and the difficulties in themselves in 
the way of their development, the opposition 
on the part of many whites, and the persist- 
ent efEort to prevent the Negro from occu- 
pying positions he is entitled to as a free- 
man and citizen of a great nation, and the 
few openings in business circles for him, 
without capital and experience, are the re- 
sults not wonderful ? 



The faithful teachers have done noble 
work. The primary scholars of sixteen 
years ago are the farmers, mechanics, store- 
keepers, teachers, prcaclicrs, kiwyers, and 
physicians of to-daJ^ The thousands of 
children then in the frecdmen's schools are 
reading, writing, transacting business with 
facility and intelligence. Thousands of 
teachers have gone out from our schools, 
and hundreds of thousands of children have 
been taught by them. 

The Frecdmen's Aid Society is now sup- 
porting the following chartered schools: 
Claflin University, at Orangeburg, S. C. ; 
Clark University, at Atlanta, G-a. ; New Or- 
leans University, at New Orleans, La. ; Rust 
University, at Holly Springs, Miss. ; Wiley 
University, at Marshall, Tex., and the Cen- 
tral Tennessee College, at Nashville, Tenn. : 
a theological school at Baltimore, Md. ; the 
Philander 0. Smith College, Little Rock, Ark. ; 
and the Meharry Medical School at Nashville 
Tenn., a department of the Central Tennes- 
see College, which has graduated thirty-six 
j^oung men with the degree of Doctor in 
Medicuie. Besides these chartered schools, 
there are twelve seminaries and academies 
which are doing excellent work for their 
hundreds of students. There are now over 
one hundred teachers in these schools, and 
about 3,500 students. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church has ex- 
pended in lier educational work among the 
freedmen alone nearly two millions of dol- 
lars; has nearljr half a mihion of school 
property among them, and the students ex- 
pend in the necessary expenses of board, in- 
cidental fees, books, and stationery, with 
traveling expenses, not less than from fifty 
to seventy- five thousand dollars a year. 
The beginning of our Church work in the 
South after the war was in the cabin, the 
church-house, the brush arbor. Now we 
have college buildings, witli equipments not 
unworthy older colleges for whites ; we have 
professional schools of theology, law, medi- 
cine ; and students who were lately slaves 
have graduated in all these schools with 
credit to themselves, and have entered upon 
courses of usefulness full of promise. 

During the sixteen years our society has 
had its history, there have been tanglit be- 
tween sixty-five and seventy thousand stu- 
dents, and the teachers which have been 
educated by these schools of the Cliurch 
have taught not less than half a miUion of 
their people. 

What has come of this work? First. 
Physically. Enter one of our congregations 
to-day; what a contrast with the one assem- 
bled sixteen years ago. Neatness, cleanli- 
ness, intelligence, instead of carelessness, 
filth, stolidity. In many of the homes of 
our people there has been a corresponding 
improvement. It may be but a cabin, but 
there is an air of neatness, that shows a 



182 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



competent head of the household. The 
flowers iu the yard, the clean floor, the 
snowy spread on the bed, the whitewaslied 
walls, speak of home and comfort. Then 
there are those whose iiomes are eleg;ant. 
They have been successful in business, and 
have accumulated some property, and are 
providing for the home-life in a way that 
shows that they can enjo}^ the beautiful as 
■well as any of the human race. Look rotmd 
you, and you find many owning- their farm- 
houses, teams, shops, with money in the 
bank. Second. Intellectually the growth 
has been steady, and, under the circum- 
stances, rapid. Multitudes of the colored 
men in business do their own writing, make 
out their own business papers, make Iheir 
own estimates. Periodicals and books are 
circulated extensively among them. Their 
intelligence is shown in their increased es- 
timate of education. The colored people were 
inclined that way once, and some of the 
more ignorant still are; but the great mass 
of our colored people are heartily in favor of 
a good education. This is evidenced by the 
change in their selection of preachers. 
They want one that can read and write. On 
one of our circuits an old-time preacher bad 
been for three years. He was the honored 
of all, and when he left the work the people 
felt that they should never see his like again. 
A young man followed him, witli a fair 
English education. After serving the church 
two years, lie was sent elsewhere. I asked 
one of the stewards if they wanted Brother 
H. back again. He answered very firmly, 
" 'So ! "We thoughthim an excellent preacher, 
and so he was. But we have had a young 
man who can read and write, and we do not 
want to go back to the old-time work." 

There are in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, among the freedmen in the South, 
not far from 2,500 Sunday schools, with over 
10,000 officers and teachers, and 140,000 
scholars. These are very largely the result 
of the work of the teachers sent South hj 
the Freedmen's Aid Society and the students 
educated in our schools. These schools, 
under the entire control of the colored peo- 
ple, in their management, exercises, work 
done, will compare favorably with the average 
Sunday-school of the country. Still further 
evidence of improvement is seen in their 
ministry. Our schools have been at work 
for the Conferences, and not a colored preacher 
in our Church in tlie South but has been 
more or less affected by them. Scores of 
the members of our Southern Conferences 
Iia\e attended these schools, have learned 
sometliing of the common English branches, 
or, perhaps, having previously taken a more 
extensive course of study, have entered the 
Conferences, and by their intelligence have 
put new ideas into the minds of older breth- 
ren, and have stimulated them to increased ac- 
tivity in Church work. These young men 



iiave been called to occupy some of the best 
appointments in their Conferences, and tlu; 
older members have been incited to increasf d 
study in order that they might not be left 
entirely out of sight in Conference appoint- 
ments. Of this Freedmen's Aid Society it 
may be truly said that its influence in waking 
up mind and developing thought has not 
onlj-- reached to the sixty or seventy thou- 
sand students who have been instructed in 
its schools, and the half million of children 
taught by these students, but, thi'ough the 
ministry, every one of them having been 
more or less influenced by this educati(mal 
work, it has been a benediction to the 200,- 
000 of our Church members among the Ne- 
groes of the South, and five times that num- 
ber who, at different times, form the 
congregations of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church among this people of the South. 
Then, as the Methodist Episcopal Church is 
the only branch of Methodism that has had 
any schools among the Negroes in the Soutli 
luitil recently, and as other branches of 
Methodism have had their Sunday-scliool 
teachers and preachers in our schools very 
largely, we may say that not a Conference 
of colored Methodist preachers have been 
without one or more representatives from our 
schools, and in this wonderful machinery of 
Methodism it may be that not a colored 
Methodist family in the whole South but has 
not been benefited by our schools. Third. 
Morally there has been growth. On thi^i 
there is difference of opinion. It is said 
there is mo'e crime now than formerly 
by the frcfdmen. Suppose there is ; does 
that prove that he is morally worse than 
then ? There's a man confined in prison ; 
he does not steal now. Does that prove him 
honest? The freedmen were slaves. As 
such they had but comparatively little 
chance to violate civil law ; and when they 
did, it was generaUy settled with the lash 
or by selling the culprit South. Since his 
emancipation the freedman has had special 
difficulties to overcome. They were poor. 
Some of them had toiled long and hard. 
Their masters had lived off their not-well- 
requited labors. They saw others enjoying 
the fruit of their labors. Is it strange that 
they were tempted when their own families 
were suffering for bread ? That they have 
yielded so liitle to the temptation is greatly 
to their credit. They were inexperienced in 
self-control. During slavery they were un- 
der such control tliat they did not need 
much self-government. The whipping-post, 
the chain-gang, the going South, the threat- 
ened death, were government enough. Im- 
mediately after emancipation they were aided 
by the government and by the commissions, 
and their wants were supplied. Then fol- 
lowed the era of the Kukluxes, during 
which terror reigned in many parts of the 
South, and the colored people were not free 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR. 



183 



to act, only under a bondage o*" fear. Then 
they were ignorant. It is a.syerted that 
since they have had schools they have 
grown worse. It is implied that llie scliools 
have been the cause of the increase of 
crime. There is no greater proportion of 
colored prisoners in the penitentiaries tliat 
have a passable English education than 
wiiite ones. And when we consider the ease 
with wliich tlie black man is sent to prison, 
as compared with the white, and the frivo- 
lous crimes that at times are followed by 
heavy penalties, we must consider prison 
statistics as not altogeQier a satisfactory 
showing of tlie increasing immorality of the 
colored people. On the contrary, the edu- 
cated ones of these schools have, almost with- 
out exception, been true to the teachings of 
moral law. Most of them have been pro- 
fessed Christians, and have proved true to 
their profession ; and, to the extent of my 
observation, I call it a slander on the black 
race, as well as a contradiction of the ex- 
perience and history of all the past, that 
Christian education tends to an increase of 
crime in the educated. 

There is a class of people in the world 
whose i)ast prophecy has been that the Ne- 
gro is a lazy, worthless specimen of human- 
ity, only made to keep his place, and that 
place is to be at the footstool of every other 
division of the human family. When a black 
man does a wrong, or commits a crime, the 
" I told you so " is the ready and joyful ut- 
terance of what seems to be the wish of 
these poor little specimens of the superior 
race — namely, that the Negro will be kept 
down, or keep himself degraded, by his own 



act. The general improvement of the col- 
ored people in finance, in inlellecr., in social 
life, in their regard for the sanctity of mar- 
riage, their higher estimate of virtue tlieir 
more intelligent worship, their increased in- 
terest in ihe advancement of the Redeemer's 
kingdom — all are evidences of improved 
moral character. Those of us who have 
been on the field, and have seen the results 
of years of patieni toil, and compare the 
present with the past, can say, " Ebenezer," 
" Hitherto the Lord hath helped us." Be- 
fore us there is the outlook of a glorious 
future to the colored people of our land. 
The bright future for them is in its dawn- 
ing, when God's children in ebony phaU 
stand side by side with God's cliildren in 
ivory, side by side in financial strength, in 
intellectual development, and in moral purity. 
The black arm shall handle the plow, the 
hammer, the plane, with a skill and strength 
equal to the white. The brains under the 
curly locks will be equally productive of 
grand conceptions as those under the 
scraighter ones. The tongue, that is hidden 
behind thicker wahs, will be as eloquent as 
those behind thinner ones. In the school- 
room, in halls of legislation, on the rostrum, 
at the bar, by the bedside of the sick, on the 
bench, in the pulpit, Ham and Japheth shall 
stand side by side ; and not only Africa, but 
the millions of the other dark races of the 
earth, shall hear the Gospel from the dark 
race of our own land. When this grand 
consummation shall be reached, not least 
among the agencies God shall have used to 
bring it about will be the Freedmen's Aid 
Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 



6. THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE SOUTH 

SINCE THE WAR. 



KEY. J. C. IIAKTZELL, D.D.,* 

Assistant Corresponding Secretary of the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 



THE full significance of the educational 
work of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
in the South, since the war, cannot be un- 
derstood without a survey of the whole work 
of that Church in that region during the 
time named. 

In two respects this Church took a differ- 
ent course, in entering the South after the 
war, from that taken by other Northern 
Churches. It went into the South as a 
whole Church, to do the threefold work of 
establishing churches, circulating literature 
through her Book Concern, and of founding 
and supporting institutions of learning. 



The pulpit, the press, and the school were 
lier methods there as elsewhere. Other 
Northern Churches have been confined al- 
most wholly from the outset to educational 
work. The Congregationalisls, who, next 
to our Church, have done most in the South, 
report less than two hundred church edi- 
fices in the whole South. The great work 
of that Church had been educational. The 
Presbyterians and Baptists of the North are 
also doing excellent educational work in the 
South, but have built even fewer churches 
than the Congregation.alists. On the other 
hand, with the Methodist Episcopal Church 



* Substance of address at National Education Assembly, 18S2. 



184 



CHRISTIAN' EDUCATORS ZZV COUNCIL. 



in everj'' Soutliern State, as elsewhere, the 
first and chief work has been to organize 
congregations and erect liouses of worsliip. 
She lias erected 3.385 church edifices in the 
South since 1S64, and every one of these 
churches represents about one hundred new 
coniinunicanta added to the Church since 
that time. In 1878 and 1879 an average of 
over four cliurches were built each week. 

Tlien, again, the Methodi.st Episcopal 
Church has gone to all classes of people in 
the South, as no other Church whose chief 
centers are in the North has done, or at- 
tempted to do. Other Cliurches have been 
and still are confined chiefly, not only to 
educational work, but also to work among 
the colored people. I doubt if all the 
Churches from the JSTorth, -outside of our 
own, have built over a hundred churches 
among the whites in the South since the 
war. This Church has built, among the 
whites alone in that territory, 1,540 church 
edifices since 1864. It has also developed 
a vigorous Conference among the Germans 
iu ttie South-west. 

This going into the South as a whole 
Church, and going to all classes of people m 
every State as God opened the way, is the 
key to the spirit and policy of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in the South since the war. 
No other spirit and policy would have been 
worthy of Alethodism. 

There are several questions often asked 
about this Southern work which ought to 
have definite answers. I will mention the 
most important of these, and try, without 
going into statistical details, to give satisfac- 
tory replies. My data at hand do not include 
statistics later than 1880. The showing 
would be better if the increase of 1881 and 
1882 was included. For brevity's sake only 
Church communicants and property are men- 
tioned; Sunday-school and other Church work 
would make an equally favorable showing. 

1. What is the actual strength of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Ghurcli in the Southern 
States ? 

The membership, including traveling and 
local preachers, is 410,899. The Church and 
parsonage property amounted, in 1880, to 
$8,563,416. The institutions of learning, all 
founded shiee the war, now number 43 ; 
with students in attendance, mostly ad- 
vanced pupils, numbering about 6,500. The 
property of these institutions in land, build- 
ings, etc., all acquired since the war and 
owned by the Church, is valued at nearly 
$500,000. Tiiere are also the weekly Advo- 
cates at New Orleans, Chattanooga, and Fort 
Worth, Texas. 

2. How niuch of the Yiresent strength of the 
Church in the South has been actual increase ? 

(1) Forty-three institutions of learning, 
with fully $500,000 of school property, and 
about 6,500 young men and women in at- 
tendance each year. This is all clear gain. 



Dr. Braden's paper gives the history of 
the development of the educational work 
among the freedmen. Beyond this, among 
the white membersliip of the Church in the 
South, eighteen seminaries and colleges have 
been developed, making thus forty- three 
iusiitutious mentioned. At the General 
Conference of 1880 action was taken look- 
ing to the superintendence and develoijment of 
the entire educational work of the Church 
iu the South under one society. For the 
year ending June 30, 1883, the Freedmen's 
Aid Society expended $178,600. In other 
ways fully enough was expended in educa- 
tional work to increase this amount to $225,- 
OOit. This was spent in educational work 
alone in one j^ear. The Missionaiy, Churclx 
Extension, and other societies of the Church 
expended in the same territory and same 
year fully as much more in supporting pas- 
tors, erecting houses of worship, aiding 
Sunday-scliools, etc. This work, it will be 
understood, has no relation to that of the 
Metiiodist Episcopal Church, South, or the 
African or African Zion Methodist Churches. 

(2) The statistics of membership and 
Church property stand as follows : 

18S0, Membersliip. 410,899 Ch. Property. $8,563,416 
1866, " . 87,804 " " . 2,580,698 

Increase in 14 years, 
Membership.... 828,095 " " .$5,982,728 

This is an average increase of more than 
22,000 members each year. This gain in 
fourteen years in the South alone is iiearlj^ 
as much as that of all Methodism in Amer- 
ica up to 1827, or during tiie first sixty 
j^ears of its existence in this countrj'. In 
1879 40,606 persons, mosth'' adults, were 
baptized by our ministers in the South. This 
increase includes the erection of 3,385 neio 
church edifices on what ivas slave territo7-y. 
Ever}'' one of these cliurches means a fixed 
center of evangelistic power where probably 
none would iiave existed had not our Church 
entered the field. Every church also means a 
Sundaj^-school, and a great number of the 
church buildings are used during the week 
for public and private secular schools. 

3. But what of Church life, especially among 
the colored people ? 

To the shame of America it must be 
said that, for two hundred j-ears, the Negro 
of our own country has been the victim of 
systematic misrepresentation. Doomed to 
slavery, it being made a crime to educate 
him, the women taught to know no virtue; 
reduced physically, intellectually, and mor- 
ally, as a rule, to the level of the brute as 
nearly as he could be by the cruel ingenuity 
of the Anglo-Saxon ; pray, who is to blame 
if the Chtirch life of the Negro is not what 
it ought to bo ? As a rule the men in the 
South who have the most to say of the Ne- 
gro's immorality are those who have the 



EDUCATION m THE SOUTH SINGE THE WAU. 



18.1 



leafjt sympathy witli any work to help edu- 
cate and save him. Multitudes of good peo- 
ple of all classes and in every part of the 
South know and rejoice in tlie lael, that in 
all the essential elements of Cliurch and re- 
ligious life our Negroes are m.iking rapid 
progress. In giving money out of their pov- 
erty to help care for tlioir own poor, to sup- 
port their pastors, to erect houses of wor- 
alup, and to aid the benevolent causes of 
the Cliiireh, they do marvelous things. It is 
not unfrequeully tiie case that our colored 
people raise for Church purposes more tiian 
do our white members on tlie same territorj^ 
The late Tennessee Conference (colored) 
raised last year $1 08 per member for sup- 
port of pastors, and 14 cents per member for 
benevolence; while the Central Tennessee 
Conference (white) raised, on the same ter- 
ritory, for Church support only :-i9 cents per 
member, and eight cents per member for 
benevolence. 

In the administration of discipline against 
every form of vice the Xegro cliurches of 
the South are also improving rapidly. 
"Wherever the minister is fairly intelligent, 
pure, and faithful, there is always a company 
of faithful men and women to rally round 
and help him. I l<now many of the churches 
in the South wliere the Discipline is as well 
enforced as it is in the average white 
ehiu'ches any^vhere. An eminent worker in 
this field forcibly says: 

" There is no estiinaiing the power of tlie 
Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church for the good of this people. Aside 
from the spiritual influence of the pure 
Grospel, there is no such beneficent power at 
work among the iS'egro race in the South to- 
day as the Methodist PJpiscopal Discipline. 
I have tlie best opportunities here to witness 
the contrast between the Metliodist Episcopal 
and other Churches. The Methodist Epis- 
copal Church is a militant body contending 
for the ten commandments and the glory of 
a pure people." 

4. What has heen the increase of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Ghurch in the border States, 
that is, luliere it was organized at the close of 
the 10 ar? 

This border territory is included in the 
States of Maryland, Delaware, District of 
Columbia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Mis- 
souri. By subtracLing the sti-ength of the 
Church in that region in 186G from what it 
was in 1880 we have the answer. The fol- 
lowing is approximately true: 



In 18Sn, Membership. 221.79T 
In 1866, " . 87,804 



Property. $6,69-3.846 

. 2,5SU,693 



Increase in 14 years, 
Membership 133,993 " . $4,113,153 

This border increase is one of the most 
remarkable facts in connection with our 
Southern work. The terrific struggles of 
our Church to maintain even an organization 



in this territory, before and during the war, 
are matters of history. Over 20,000 seceded 
from us in Maryland in 18G1. It is esti- 
mated that we lost 60,000 members on the 
border during the years 18(U-63. If the 
Church had hesitated to re-enter the South 
— for had slie hesitated at first the work 
would ue\ er have been prosecuted vigorous- 
ly — wlio does not see that the intensity of 
opposition and conflict would, of necessiij', 
have continued on the borders? As to 
what the result would have been, wo can 
only speculate ; but no one can for a moment 
suppose tliat such an increase as is above 
exhibited on this disputed territory would 
have been possible. 

5. What proportion of our C hurch strengtii 
in the South is among the white people, and 
luhat aviong the colored? 

As nearly as the facts could be gathered, 
up to 1880, the proportion was as follows: 

Membere in White Con- 
ferences 212,776 Property. $6,560,287 

Membeis in Colored Con- 
ferences 197,123 " . 2,003,129 

Several of our Southern Conferences arc 
'"mixed;" that is, have not divided on the 
"color line:" so lliat it is difficult to reach 
exact results, but the above is practically 
correct. 

6. What proportion of the increase in the 
whole South has ieen among the white people, 
and ivhat amo7ig the colored f 

It will be remembered that the net in- 
crease in the whole South was 323,095 up 
to 1880. This increase is divided between 
the wiiite and colored people about as fol- 
lows: 

White members, 1S80. . .212,776 Property. $6,560,287 
1866... 68.000 '■ . 2,-330,693 



.$4,229,594 



Increase in 14 years . . 144,773 

Colored members, 1880.197.128 Property. $2.003. 129 
1866. 20,000 " . 250,(iOO 



Increase in 14 years. . 177,123 



.$1,753,129 



Tlie very large increase among ^tlie white 
people of the South is a most encouraging 
fact ; and, as before stated, forms one of tlie 
great points of diflerence between our South- 
ern work and that of any other Church 
whose chief centers are in tlie ISTorth. All 
other Churches from tlie North have as yet 
done but little in Church work among; the 
white people of the South. 

Dr. Stevenson, of Kentucky, lias latelj-, in 
TJie Christian Advocate, developed this fact 
with elaborate painstaking. He says: 

"The increase of white members of our 
Church in the South in sixteen years is 
about equal to the whole number of Meth- 
odists in the world at tlie time of Mr. Wes- 
ley's death, after fifty years of labor from 
the time of building the first Methodist 
chapel in Bristol. It is equal to the whole 
number of Methodists in the United States 



186 



GIIBI8TIAN EDUGAT0R8 IN COUNCIL. 



ill 1806, after forty years of effort. It is 
equal to the number in the Valley of the 
Mississiijpi in the year 1827, at the end of 
forty-one years from the time when the first 
uiissionaries entered Kentucliy. It is equal 
to three fourths of all the Methodists in 
Canada. It exceeds the wliole number of 
members of our Church in all New England 
at this day, at the end of a little less than a 
century from the time of the Rev. Jesse 
Lee's first entrance into tliat field. Let it be 
remembered that these comparisons are with 
our white increase only, and not with our en- 
tire white membersliip." 

The Methodist Episcopal Church has one 
founli as many wliiie members on what was 
slave territory as has the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church, South. The latter Church has 
increased in white membership in the South 
since 1864 not more than 53 per cent., while 
the former has increased 179 per cent, in 
white membership in the same territory. 

A few months belore his death I spent a 
very pleasant hour with Dr. T. 0. Summers, 
of the Church South, in his ofSce at Nash- 
ville. The whole question of the presence 
of our Church and its work in the South 
was discussed. On leaving he said: "Well, 
God bless you in educating the Negroes. 
After a while you must help us put them all 
into a big Negro Methodist Church by them- 
selves. After that all you white men from 
the North must go home, and then we will 
have peace." Dr. Summers spoke the senti- 
ments of nine tenths of his Church. Our work 
among the colored people is now acknowledged 
to be a great success, and hence the desire to 
have us, at least organically, abandon it. 
Our Southern brethren want still to main- 
tain the exclusive right Methodistically to 
Evangelize the white millions of the South. 
Tiiey do not seem to realize the absurdity 
of that claim in the light of the above 
facts. There is, however, some excuse for 
their mistake; but what shall be said of 
some north of the Ohio who insist every 
few months in asking through some one of 
our Advocates whether or not our work 
among the whites of the South is a success. 

7. What has been the net increase of the 
Church on 7iew Southern territory ichere, at 
close of the war, we were not organized f 

The answer is secured with approximate 
correctness by subtracting the increase in the 
whole South from the increase on the border : 

Whole increase of mem- 
bers to 1880 823,095 Property . $6,282,723 

Border increase of mem- 
bers to 1880 183,993 " . 4,113,153 

Increase, new Confer- 
ences 189,102 " . $2,1 69,570 

8. Wliat has been the proportion of increase 
between the luliite and colored people, both on 
the border territory and in the new Conferences f 

The Delaware, Lexington, and Washing- 
ton Conferences include tlie work among the 



colored people on the border ; and the Bal- 
timore, Wilmington, West Viiginia, Iven- 
tucky, and Missouri Conferences among the 
white people in the same region. A careful 
calculation gives the following approximate 
results up to 1880 : 

IKCBEASE ON BOEDF.E. 

Wliite members 85,000 Property . . . .$8,416,000 

Colored " 88,600 " .... 035,000 

INCREASE IN NEW CONPEEENCES. 

White members 56.000 Property.. . ^'675,000 

Colored '• 153,000 '• ....1,633,000 

The reply to this question gives an inter- 
esting view of the whole field. Our chief 
growth among the whiles has been on the 
border. That is but natural. There the 
Ciiurch was organized from the first, and 
the territory was in immediate business and 
social relations with the great body of the 
Church ill the North. But is it not a most 
remarkable fact, that fifty-six thousand 
white members should have been gathered 
in the New South in so short a time, and 
these, loo, almost entirely from the world, 
and on territory where we were regarded by 
all the other Churches as intruders and 
aliens? Could tlie blessing of God be more 
truly manifest upon an}- work ? 

The chief growth of the colored people 
lias been in the new South. This, too, is 
natural. There the great bulk of the col- 
ored people are, and there the Church has 
from the first put Jortli her most earnest 
efforts to develop her work among them. 

The full significance of education in rela- 
tion to Christian evangelization, among the 
ignorant and poor millions of the South, has 
not yet been sufficiently impressed upon the 
American Christian public. The author of 
"Our Bro'her in Black," referring to the 
educational work of the Churches from the 
North in the South among the colored 
people, says, that unless the North had 
taken hold of this work the South would 
now be "well nigh uninhabitable;" and, ap- 
pealing to the North in behalf of Negro edu- 
cation in the Soutli, he said, "Unless you 
continue to help, and help mightily, it can- 
not be done." And the same writer, after 
giving a picture of an ignorant white familj' 
in his State, and statuig that there were 
multitudes of such in the South, saj's, " If 
you can help them, in Christ's name do it." 

The work of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church in the South has only fairly begun. 
Who shall express in words the full meaning 
of a Church work which includes the duty 
of that Church to 18,500,000 of American 
citizens ? This work includes the duty of 
the Church to 12,000,000 of the white peo- 
ple in the South. Of these many were and 
are in Christian cliurches, and 3'et need the 
inspiration of new convictions, and the 
transforming power of a better civilization. 
Aiid of these same white millions, vast mul- 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR. 



187 



titudes were and yet are out of the Church, 
and have never been touched by even tlie 
blessings of common schools, to say nothing 
of Church and Sunday-school privileges. 

Add together all the meml)ers of JProtest- 
ant Churches in the South, and multiply 
that number by four, to include those under 
the direct influence of the Churches, and 
you will have only about 12,000,000 out of 



18,500,000. Who can c-timate ihedutyof 
the Methodist Episcopal Churcli to that 
other 6,5110,000? And, then, nearly all of 
the 1,000,000 of Xegrocs in America are and 
will be iu tiio South. What Wesley or 
Whitefield or Simpson has logic or eloquence 
enough tu demonstrate or poi-tray the magni- 
tude of the work God requires of the Church 
in behalf of these needy multitudes ? 



7. RESPONSIVE ADDRESS. 



GEN". S. C. ARMSTRONG, 

President of Hampton Institute, Hampton, Va. 



In 1862 a few teachers went with the 
boys in blue into the field and occupied wliat 
places they could get, as the Federal lines 
moved on and tlie Confederate army moved 
back, pushing as they had a chance, build- 
ing up their schools, gathering in their chil- 
dren. Up to the surrender in 1865 there 
had been a good many more than a thousand 
of these Northern teachers scattered througit 
ihe Southern States, and from 1866 until 
18T0 planned a work for so long as the race 
should last. The four years from 1862 was 
pre-eminently a time of seed-sowing ; later, 
from 1870 to now, they have been pushing 
forward the plans tliey laid so well then. 
From 1866 to 1870 came in the Freedmen's 
Bureau under Gen. Howard, with an appro- 
priation of three and a half millions devoted 
to the cause of education. 

Some five or six thousand apiece of these 
millions were put into the schools in the 
various States of the South. There is some- 
thing worth looking into in regard to this: 
The nation appropriated three and a half 
millons of dollars at that time, just as the 
work was organizing. Most opportunely 
came this organization, the Freedmen's Bu- 
reau, and by wise, generous measures met 
the most vital point in this progress. So 
that by 1870 tliere were nearly 5,000 of se- 
lected young colored men and women who 
received advanced education and went out 
to labor among the people. That aid from 
the government was, I believe, the best 
money ever spent in connection with tlie 
whole Southern question. Look at the 
amount that is wasted in supporting troops, 
all of which will amount to nothing in the 
case of a great political change. While the 
government was fussing those ten years 
from 1870 to now, these teachers were doing 
a mighty work. 

This meeting is to give them a welcome. 
They did a vital work — far more than any 



otliers. The soldiers have wrought great 
destruction — that was needed, and the waste 
places are being slowly built up. It was a 
grand, stimulating worli of seed-sowing and 
spreading broadcast general ideas, Now, 
right in connection with this came that 
government aid of three and a lialf millions, 
which I claim is not known as it ought to 
be, nor appreciated, and shows that the gov- 
ernment can lielp. 

From 1875 to 1880 the Southern States 
built up tlieir systems of free schools, sup- 
ported by taxes. This was work more and 
more in harmony with Northei'n workers. 
To-day those of us on wiiora may have 
seemed to fall the mantle of the old aboli- 
tionists are trying to do the work, and we 
are in more complete harmony with the best 
people of tlie South than any other class of 
men. These men have won the respect of 
all the people whose respect is worth liav- 
ing. In my own experience in Virginia for 
the last sixteen years, there has been not 
a single outrage upon teachers, who have 
gone out five or six hundred strong into the 
neighboring States. 

This harmony of feeling unites all parties. 
There is a grand and growing work done. 
So great is the increase of the blacks that 
we cannot educate even this increase. Pri- 
vate aid has furnished many millions. We 
do not want the government to aid our liigher 
schools. Political support is political con- 
trol. We must not have government aid be- 
cause government aid means government 
supervision. The Indian has been well nigh 
ruined by too much government aid. Po- 
litical support is ruinous to any work of any 
kind — the system of appointments is so vi- 
cious. Now it is time for the people to take 
up the Indian cause, and time for the govern- 
ment to take up the Negro cause. 

The Negroes furnish us with a great na- 
tional problem. We stand (x fall with them 



188 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



and tliey witii us. The illiterates have the 
baliince of power in this land. Tliey can 
make and unmake the President, and almost 
the nation itself. On the otlier side the Ne- 
gro, physicallj'', has wonderful capacity, not 
only to increase but to labor. They furnish 
the raw material of tlie cotton mills of the 
( ivilized world. Morally, it comes to this: 
that the Negro is susceptible to Christian 
teacliing. There is no mission field in the 
world where there is a greater return for 
Christian work than there is among the Ne- 
groes in the South. If they do not come up 
they will go down. That is IheNetiro ques- 
tion. With the Indian it is civilization or 
extermination. If we fight them three 



white men will fall for one Indian, and that 
wont paj'. It might be interesting, if time 
permitted, to refer to that other race — the 
Chinese. They are a strong race — the 
strongest of the Asiatic people. 

Out West they say that the Indian can do 
no more than a buffalo or a wild pony. As 
they tried them they have known them. 
As the Chinese have been tried by the 
Christian men and women of this country — 
tried in New York and Boston and San 
Francisco — the testimony of all is that they 
are as easily brought in contact with civili- 
zation as any other race. There is a grand 
work before us, and the future is all gleam- 
ing with hope. 



8. 



THE NEGRO IN SLAVERY AND IN FREEDOM- 
OF WORK BY PRESBYTERIANS. 



-SUMMARY 



KEY. R. H. ALLBN, D.D., 

Corresponding Secretary of tUe Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freedmen. 



THAT we shall reap what we have sown 
is a truth, not only tauglit in the Book of 
the Great Teacher, but one that is exem- 
plified in every human experience, and is 
equally true in regard to families, nations, 
and government. " Whatsoever a man sow- 
eth that shall he also reap." We are now 
reaping the harvest of the seed-sowing of 
our fathers; and in regard to African slavery 
we may say with the prophet: " The fathers 
liave eaten sour grapes and the children's 
teeth are set on edge." 

The moral degradation and deterioration 
of the Negroes has, of late, been brought 
prominently before the Church and the 
country, and that vi^e may form a just and 
intelligent idea of this subject, and rightly 
understand the relation we bear to a people 
who have just come out of a long bondage, 
we should consider the effect of slavery as it 
has impressed itself upon their character 
and condition. 

Slavery no longer exists in the land, but 
its results are here ; they are here in active 
operating forces both among the whites and 
the blacks. No institution like that of 
American slavery could exist in any land for 
two hundred and thirty years without leav- 
ing its impress on the whole nation, and es- 
pecially on the character and condition of 
those who were enslaved. And now since 
they are free, and have become American 
citizens, if we would know and do our duty 
toward them, we should understand clearly 
the relations we have borne to them in the 
past, and do bear to them at the present 
time. If we would help the freedmen; if 



we would elevate and Christianize them, we 
must take them just where slavery left them, 
which was in a very low and degraded con- 
dition. 

True, God, who over-rules all things for 
his glory, and makes even the wrath of man 
to praise him, in his merciful providence 
has brought a measure of good out of the 
evil of slavery. 

1. In slavery tlie Negroes learned the 
English language, which was of immense im- 
portance to them. It gave them new ideas, 
new channels of thought, and new means of 
moral and intellectual improvement, which 
paved the way for civilizing and Christian 
influences, especially when all barriers were 
removed, and the gate thrown wide open by 
their emancipation. 

It brought them as heathens within the 
sound of the Gospel, which to many of 
them proved an unspeakable good. 

In slavery the Negroes were tauglit habits 
of industry. They learned how to work; 
they learned the use of tools, so that many 
of them became expert builders, carpenters, 
blacksmiths, and cabinet-makers, cooks, mil- 
liners, dressmakers, hostlers, porters, waiters, 
and shopmen. But it was slavery; a slavery 
which, while with one hand it brought these 
Africans into a land of civilization, and into 
contact with elevating influences, with the 
other hand stood ready to smite tliera down 
if any of them under these influences attempt- 
ed to rise from the childhood of slavery into 
tlie manhood of freedom. Admitting a,nj 
good that may have come indirectly out of 
slavery, it kept the Negroes in a state of 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINGE THE WAE. 



180 



childliood, morally and intellectually. Its 
verj^ object was to keep them so, in order 
to make them more abject slaves. True, it 
clothed, lioused, and fed them, but only to 
make tiiem more valuable property. The 
slave was told what he was or was not to 
do, Ills daily task was planned and laid out 
for him, and he was put to it just as a ma- 
chine is wound up and started on its work, 
thus removing from him all necessity for 
thought or thrift or self-control. Whatever 
would make him a better, more contented, 
and even happier slave was given him, but 
whatever would appeal to liis manhood or 
lead him to aspire to any condition better 
than tliat of a slave was carefully denied 
him. He must not be taught to read or 
write under a penalty of fines and imprison- 
ments for the white man who did ii and 
lashes to the black man who sought it. 
Slavery was written on every thing he saw 
and on every thing he touched ; it w^s hoard 
in the language spoken to him and in that 
which he must use to others. His manhood 
was stunted and dwarfed from the beginning, 
so as to keep him in a state of helpless and 
dependent childhood. It is said that in 
ancient times, among the arts of Eastern 
sorcerers was that of making dwarfs, play- 
tiiings in human forms, who by means of 
inhumMU tortures were kept children in size 
for the amusement of the courts of kings and 
princes. 

In one of Eber's books occurs a passage 
describing a conversation between one of 
these monstrosities and the wretched woman 
who had made him what he was. 

Said the dwarf : " If you had sent me to 
school, and I were not a dwarf, I would 
play with men as they have played with me; 
for I am as clever as they, and a hundred 
roads lie before me, but you deprived me of 
my growth and made me a cripple." 

" But you are treated kindly," answered 
the cruel woman. " No one is better ofl' 
than you dwarfs." 

The dwarf pressed liis hand to his heart, 
and in a sad but determined tone replied: 
" You have spoiled my life ; j'ou have 
crippled, not my body only, but my soul ; and 
you have condemned me to sufferings that 
are nameless and unutterable. You made 
me what I am by your arts ; you sold me for 
a plaything to a boy of my own age; I was 
dressed with ribbons and feathers, and har- 
nessed to his chariot, and flogged when I did 
not go fast enough. I grew to be in mind a 
youth like any other, passionate, restless, and 
fiery I was treated like a child, a toy, while 
love and hatred and great projects were 
strong within me. If I tried to resist, they 
beat me with rods. Once when I forgot my- 
self and struck the boy who maltreated me, 
I w.is hung up by my girdle and left to 
swing there; the rats fell upon me. See, 
here are the scars! — they may some day 



wear out, but the wounds my spirit received 
have never ceased lo bleed." 

See you not, in this touching scene, the 
poor freedman of to-day, still suffering the 
effect of slavery, and more justly reproaching 
these who have dwarfed his manhood while 
he saj^s: "God intended me to be a man, but 
you kept me a child; He gave me the powers 
and aspirations of a man, but you crushed 
them out and dwarfed them. The Bible you 
taught me to believe says 'A man shall leave 
father and mother and cleave to his wife,' 
and that he shall bring up his children 'in 
the nurture and admonition of the Lord;' 
but you tore ray wife and children from me 
and from each other; j^ou fettered my intel- 
lect and carefull3'' closed up hy laws and 
penalties every avenue of improvement, and 
then look down upon me as of an inferior 
race, incapable of rising above the condition 
of a dwarfed cliildhood and hopeless immo- 
rality. When, sometimes, yielding to the 
natural impulses of manhood, I resisted the 
hand that oppressed me, I sought by flight 
the freedom I yearned for, you flogged me 
into passive submission of a master's will. 
The scars which my body bears may wear 
out, but the wounds my spirit received have 
not yet ceased to bleed." 

"We have heard much lately of a "fearful 
indictment of the Negro race," but when 
weighed in the scales of truth and justice, 
there is a mucli more fearful indictment here 
of the white race. The moral degradation 
resulting from such a state of things was in- 
deed deplorable, and it is this which makes 
the condition of the emancipated race so full 
of peril and difficulty to-day. It hangs as a 
mill-stone about their necks. Coming as they 
did from heathenism, they brought with tliem 
a low state of morality, and there was nothing 
in slavery to elevate their standard — there 
was nothing to impress upon them the sacred- 
ness of those conjugal and filial relations, on 
which the elevation of any race so much de- 
pend, but much to desti'oy what little respect 
they may have had for these relations in 
their native heathenism. In Africa they 
could own their wives and children, but here 
they had no legal right to either. 

The master could and often did separate 
and sell them, the husband to one person, 
the wife to another, and the children to a 
tliird. Some of the most touching scenes I 
have witnessed in the South since the emanci- 
pation were parents among the poor freed- 
mpn searching for children and children for 
parents. Many of our papers were filled with 
advertisements for the loved and the lost 
who had been separated by the cruel sys- 
tem. 

A few weeks since I was in the home of 
a colored family in Nashville, Tenn., and en- 
joyed their hospitality, whose singular his- 
tory illustrates this point. 

A slave in Tennessee earned and saved 



100 



CEItmTIAK EDUCATORS IJV COUNOIL. 



money to purchase Iiimself for $1,800. He 
endeavored to purchase his wife aud httle 
daughter, but their owuer moved to Missis- 
sippi and took tliem witli him. jSTews came 
to tlxe sorrowing father after a wliile that 
the child, througli sicliuess and neglect, was 
at tlie point of death. By great exertion he 
raised money and bought the dying child for 
$350, and nursed her back to life. Years 
weni by, and his wife being lost to him by 
the usages of slavery, he married again, and 
bought his second wife for .$1,300, paying in 
all $3,450 for himself and family. In doing 
lliis, however, he had become embarrassed in 
the livery business in wliicli he was engaged, 
and had to mortgage all his property. Hav- 
ing neglected to secure free papers for iiis 
wife aud child, he learned that his creditors 
were about to take them and sell them again 
into slavery. Abandoning all his property, 
he look his little family and fled to Cincin- 
nati, where he commenced life again without 
a penny. Here, by the help of friends, the 
daughter obtained an education, and about 
this time, by the sudden death of her father, 
she and her step-mother were thrown on 
their own resources; but, by perseverance 
and self-denial, this girl not only assisted her 
mother, but bought a little home in Nash- 
ville; in which, after emancipation, having 
found her own long-lost mother and only 
sister, she placed them. Thus, by the strange 
usages of slavery, tliat girl occupies the 
anomalous position of having two living 
mothers. It is interesting to know that this 
noble girl was the accomplished pianist of the 
celebrated Jubilee Singers, and, now the wife 
of a Presbyteriiui minister, is with her husband 
about to enter on the work among the fieed- 
,raen. In this incident, and it is only one 
among thousands, we see how the affections 
of the hearts of the poor slaves were es- 
tranged, with nothing left to compensate 
them for tJieir loss. Mere outward circum- 
stances of animal comfort could not do it, nor 
any special acts of kindness on the part of 
their owners. 

"Kind!" cried an excited Negro, during 
the talk with some colored men afrer a 
prayer-meeting, when reference was made 
to a planter, his former master, in the neigh- 
borhood. "Kind!" he cried, with quiver- 
ing lip and flashing ej^e, " I was dat man's 
slave, and he sell my wife ; he sell my two 
poor little chil'en ; yes, brudders. if dar's a 
God in heaven he did. Kind! ye.'s he give 
me corn enough, he give me pork enougli, 
and he never give me a lick wid de whip — 
but whar's my wife ? — whar's my poor chil- 
'en ? Take away de pork, I say ; take away 
de corn ; I can work and raise dese for my- 
self, but give rae back mypoorchiren as was 
sold away from me." 

Is it to be wondered at that there was no 
sacredness of tlie marriage tie among them— 
that there was no sense of sliame in habitual 



immorality. They were practically taught 
that there was no distinction between vn-tue 
and vice. Tliis continual crushing out of 
all that was manly and womanly in them led 
them to feel an utter helplessness, whicli 
made them yield more readily to what was 
wrong and degrading, and banished from 
their minds any sense of responsibihty which 
otherwise they might have felt. Under 
slavery there was no social position to gain 
or lose. The slave who was dishonest or 
untruthful or unchaste felt no sense of 
shame, and lost nothing in the estimation of 
others. As has been well said by a Soutliern 
bishop: "You will find that the pressure of 
social standing is the control which keeps 
nine tenths of non-Christian people in the 
path of morality; and, I am afraid, a large 
proportion of professors also. The slave had 
no social position to lose, and the Negro has 
scarcely any more to-day." 

These are the people who have been liber- 
ated from two iiundred and thirty years of 
bondage, and this is the condition in which 
slavery left them, and in which freeoum 
found them. Sad reaping of an unwise sowing. 

Twent}^ years figo another seed was Ci<st 
into this unlikely soil — Emanci2Mtion ; five 
years later another — Citizensldp ; two years 
after anotlier — the Ballot. What has the 
reaping been? Are there any first-fruits of 
a more Joyful harvest? Is there any im- 
provement in the freed race, any progress in 
moral and mental development, and any ad- 
vance toward enliglitened citizenship ? Has 
emancipation been of any benefit to them, 
and have missionary enterprises and educa- 
tional efforts proved a success among tlieai? 
We hear it said sometimes that they were 
"better off" and happier while slaves than 
they are now — that they cared nothing for 
freedom. Let a single incident answer that 
assertion. A fine-looking old grandmother, 
nearly seventy, but erect as a pine tree, had 
two sons in the first enlisted colored regiment 
in South Carohna, but she and most of her 
family were slaves. She determined to es- 
cape, and make her w^ay to the regiment 
where her sons were. Gathering her cliil- 
drcn and graidchildren, to the number of 
twenty-two, in a neighboring marsh, they 
concealed themselves till night-fall, when 
they started for freedom. Finding an old 
fiat-boat on the river, they boarded it and 
floated down the stream for forty miles. 
Colonel Trowbridge was on the gun-boat 
when they were picked up, and he said when 
the -'flat" touched the side of the vessel, the 
old grandmother rose to her full height, with 
her youngest grandchild iu her arms, and 
said only, "i/y God! are we free f In the 
earnest expression of this old woman you 
have what four millions of slaves thought of 
freedom. And what lias emancipation done 
for tliem, and how have tliej borne them- 
selves uuder it ? 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR. 



191 



1. Emancipation gave them a country — a 
country wliieli they could call their own. 
Tliis tiiey had never enjoyed before. They 
were a countryless race. That was a touch- 
ing scene, twenty years ago last Januarj', 
when a colored regiment of freed slaves, the 
lirst enlisted in the Union army, was called 
out to hear the Emancipation Proclamation 
read. Just as the speaker closed, a beautiful 
new flag, sent to the regiment from New 
York, was unfurled and waved, which now 
for the first time rasant any thing to those 
poor people, and suddenly and all unexpect- 
edl.y, close beside the platform, a strong 
male voice arose, which was instantly joined 
by others, while they sang: 

"My country, 'tis of thee, 

Sweet land of liberty, 

Of thee I sing." 

People looked around and at each other to 
see wliere the interruption came from; but, 
firmly and irrepressibly, the quavering voices 
sang on, verse after verse. Said their colonel : 
" I never saw any thing so electric; it made 
all the other words cheap. It seemed the 
choked voice of a race at last iniloosed. 
'Twas so wonderfull}' unconscious, so quaint, 
so innocent. The old men and women sang, 
and a little slave boy sitting near the foot of 
tlte platform, even he must join in." What 
a touching and beautiful tribute to the Day 
of Jubilee. JSTor was it strange, when the 
song ceased, to see tears every-where. Just 
think of itl — the first day they had ever had 
a country ; the first flag they had ever seen 
which prcjinised any thing to tlieir people. 
No wonder their simple souls, so full of song, 
burst out in their unconscious lay. Erom 
that hour the flag and the country it repre- 
sented became theirs. 'Twas not long after 
this that one of this regiment closed an ap- 
peal for tlie American flag: " Our mas'rs dey 
hab lib under de flag, dey got rich under it 
and ebery ting beautiful fur de chil'en. Under 
it dey hab grind us up and put us in dere 
pocket fur money. But de fust minit dey 
tink dat de ole flag mean freedom fur us col- 
ored folks, dey pull it right down and run 
up de rag ob dere own. But we'll neber de- 
sert de ole flag, boys; we hab lib under it fur 
eighteen hundred and sixty-two years, and we'll 
die fur it now." Though his chronology 
was discharged at long range, it was an ef- 
fective speech. The poor fellow did not 
tiiink, perhaps, how soon thousands of them 
would be bleeding and dying beneath the 
flag. 

2. Emancipation gave them a government 
as well as a country. Heretofore they were 
without any rights in courts of justice or 
halls of legislation. And they soon learned 
to know the worth of these privileges and 
the power of government. A colored ser- 
geant of the guard, to a white man who had 
been arrested and who questioned his author- 



ity, made an answer that could hardly be 
improved. Pointing to the chevrons on his 
sleeve, he paid: "Know what dat mean? 
Dat mean gov'ment." The right of citizen- 
ship and the ballot at once appealed to their 
manhood, and ilioj proved that manhood on 
the battle-held. I know very well that men 
both North and South smiled at the idea of 
Negro soldiers. The brand of slavery was 
upon them, and it was concluded at once that 
they had neither the intelligence to learn the 
drill nor courage to stand before the fire of 
the enemy. But did they fail on either of 
these points? Before the end of two years 
after the enlistment of the first South Caro- 
lina regiment, there were one hundred thou- 
sand well-disciplined colored troops, whose 
courage and their knowledge of the drill had 
been tested on many a bloody field. That 
was a noble tribute to their vigilance and 
faitlifulness as soldiers, when the white 
officers, returning to camp after an evening 
part}', were eager and careful to get the 
countersign, saying: "The darkeys are on 
guard to-night, and we must look out for our 
lives." More than a hundred battle-fields 
tested the freedmen as soldiers and men, 
and proved them worthy of a country and a 
government. One single incident among 
many occurs to me here. Fort Wagner was 
about to be stormed, and a colored regiment 
was to lead the charge. When the line was 
formed. General Strong said to them: "/s 
there a man here luho thinks himself unable to 
sleep in that fort to-night? " The earth rang 
with the thunder of their " No." Turning to 
the colored standard-bearer, he .said: "Is 
there any man here to take his place if this 
brave color-bearer falls?" With uplifted 
hands the whole regiment sliouted in one 
voice " Yes," " Yes." The charge was made, 
young Carno^r, the black color-bearer, was 
tlie second man on the parapet, where he at 
once received three wounds and fell on his 
knees, but still holding up ixis flag ; and when 
tlie regiment was ordered to retire, streaming 
with blood, he limped along with the troops 
to tlie hospital, wliere he fell almost lifeless, 
saying, with a proud smile: '^ The old flag 
never touclied the ground once, hoys^ 

Let it be remembered that the government 
for which these men so fought, while it paid 
the white soldier $13 per month, paid the 
colored soldier only $7 — the color being the 
only difference between them. 

3. Emancipation kindled within the Ne- 
groes a most unexpected desire for an educa- 
tion. Wherever the proclamation prevailed, 
the extraordinary spectacle was beheld of an 
ignorant and enslaved race springing to its 
feet, after a bondage of two hundred and 
tliirty years, and with its first free breath 
crying for means for an education. Could 
such a cry come from a hopelessly degraded 
and inferior race? Mr. Carl Schurz, on his 
trip through the South at the close of the 



102 



CHRISTIAN' EDUCATORS m COUNCIL. 



war, said : " The first hopeful sign for the 
South which I saw was a Negro soldier 
standing guard with a blue-back spelling- 
book in his hand." It may not liave been 
very soldierljr, but it was hopeful. Said Col. 
Higginson. the commander of the first col- 
ored regiment: "I was encouraged and 
touched, on going the rounds of the camp at 
night, to find most of the men lying flat on 
the ground before a blazing fire, witli spelling- 
books in front of them." 'Llie same was 
witnessed every-where. The black cook in 
the kitchen, the waitress in the dining-room, 
the hostler in the stable, and the colored 
hack-driver on his bo.T, had their spelling- 
books beside them. These scenes repeatedly 
came under my own eyes in the South. 
Such a spectacle was never seen in any land 
among any people under similar circum- 
stances. 

But are the Negroes capable of receiving 
an education and a high civilization ? This 
question is often asked. Now, there are two 
stand-points from which civilization and the 
people to be civilized may be looked at. A 
Southern gentleman spent an hour in trying 
to show me that a Negro had no soul, and 
consequently needed no education. That was 
one side. Simon, a shrewd old colored soldier, 
as he was jogging behind his colonel on the 
shell road leading out of Beaufort, S. C, said 
in a very serious tone: "I'se going to leave 
de Souf, cunnel, when de war is over. I'se 
made up my mind dat dese here Secesh will 
neber be cibilized in my time." That was the 
other side. But, seriouslj', if an answer is 
wanted to this question, go to the schools 
and colleges wliich have been established 
among the freedmen — go to Biddle, Lincoln, 
and Pisk Universities — go to our parochial 
schools, where thousands have learned to 
read and write — ^look into the intelligent 
faces of some dusky brothers on this floor, 
and you will get an answer as true and 
convincing as it will be eloquent and touch- 
ing. They are naturally a quick-witted race, 
and this, coupled with their earnest desire 
for education, has made them remarkably apt 
to learn. 

4. Emancipation gave these people names. 
Heretofore they had been a nameless race. 
They were named very often according to 
the whim or fancy of the master or mistress, 
these names serving simply as labels by 
which a man's property was designated, as 
Gen. Jolmson's Bill, Capt. Martin's Tom, or 
tlie "Widow Patterson's Dinah. They could 
have no family names, as they were liable at 
any time to change their owners. When left 
to choose names for their children, the par- 
ents, unable to bestow a family name, often 
gave them a number of names, as if they 
wished to make up in quantity what they 
lacked in quality. You would sometimes 
see a little ebony form rolling in the dirt be- 
fore " Mammy's " cabin, who bore the cogno- 



men of " Pestus-Edwin-Leander-Garrett," 
and not far off " Cornelia-Pelicia-Thursday- 
McArthur." In the next cabin you would 
meet with "President Abraham Lincoln," 
and by his side a " Queen Victoria." If a 
child was named for any celebrated person, 
he took titles and all. I met a colored hack- 
driver in Nashville a short time ago who 
introduced himself as " Major-General An- 
drew Jackson." The most remarkable name 
I met was a brawny black fellow who came 
before the Preedmen's Bureau as George- 
Washington-Sophy- Ann-Sophia-Harper-Pox, 
having added the names of each successive 
master and mistress. When citizenship was 
given them, they, of course, had to choose 
family names; and it was amusing, though 
sad, to see them selecting their names and 
birthdays, for few knew how old they were. 
I noticed, of those who had liad a number of 
owners, they almost invariably chose the 
name of the master or mistress who had 
been kindest to them. It was a new experi- 
ence to them to find that the father, mother, 
and children could bear the same name, but 
it had its influence upon them. And right 
here they began for the first time to realize, 
in its true sense, the sacredness of the mar- 
riage relation when they found their mar- 
riages legalized, and their names recorded in 
the register of marriages. The first recorded 
marriage of the poor freedmen in the South 
may have been of little moment to the man 
who made the record, but it was a tremendous 
event as it stood related to the future condi- 
tion of tliat people. I wish I knew the 
names of the lowly pair that form the first 
marriage record of the liberated slaves ; for it 
seems to me that, though all unconscious of 
it, a thrill of new life must have started 
through the veins of the whole race. 

5. The right to hold property in their own 
names, which emancipation brought, had an 
elevating and energizing influence on the 
Negroes. Slavery had made them thriftless 
and improvident, which is still characteristic 
of the race. Yet I found more activity and 
more desire for work among the poor Negroes 
of the South than among the poor whites. 
Planters and emploj^ers who pay their hands 
promptly and justly find no difficulty in get- 
ting Negroes to work ; and among the better 
class of them I found provident habits rapidly 
forming. Ten years after their freedom they 
had deposited in their savings-banks over $12,- 
000,000. In the State of Georgia they own 
583,000 acres of land, and pay taxes on $9,- 
000,000 worth of property. The last census 
shows us that the colored people are assessed 
for over $91,000,000 worth of taxable prop- 
erty. Does tliis look like an incurably thrift- 
less race ? especially when it is remembered 
that as a race they are really only twenty 
years old, after coming out of a helpless and 
dwarfed childhood of two hundred years, 
and had to make their way through these 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAIi. 



193 



twenty years with the brand of slavery upon 
thera, and in the face of a wretched color- 
prejudice which has threatened to crush them 
at every step. 

Since iheir emancipation it is very evident 
that great changes have come over the col- 
ored race and great improvements. Tliey 
liave been lifted liiglier. But it is said, while 
all this is true, tliere is no change in their 
morals. If it is meant by this tliat as a race 
they have not been lifted up to a higher 
plane of morality, just as it may be said the 
Chinese have not, after all that missions 
have done for them, it is true ; but if it is 
meant that there has been no improvement 
in tlie morals of families, communities, and 
whole neighborhoods, where intelligent mis- 
sionary work has been carried ou among 
them, then it is utterly false. As a race, 
they have only been partially reached by 
missionary and moralizing influences, and 
consequently the mass of them are still just 
where slavery left them; but where they 
have been reached, a man is willfully blind 
who cannot see a decided improvement in 
their morals. The morals which these people 
learned under slavery, if any, had first to be 
imlearned, and a foundation laid for a true 
morality. This has been done with encour- 
aging success where our missions have been 
planted. Of this, there is abundant testi- 
mony. Take, for example, your colored 
Synod of Atlantic, which has in it seveut}'- 
one colored ministers and over two hundred 
ruling elders. Look at their character and 
morals. I have taken special pains to learn, 
from white and colored people, how these 
men stand in the communities in which they 
live for purity of life and consistent Christian 
conduct; and, with only three exceptions, I 
find they have the confidence of both white 
and colored citizens, and will compare favor- 
ably, in these respects, with the same num- 
ber of men in any Christian body. There are 
thirteen thousand members in the churches 
under the care of this Synod, and among 
iliem many men and women of deep and 
earnest piety. An intelligent elder in the 
white church on Edisto Island, once a large 
slave-holder, said to me: "To know what 
you have done among these people, you 
should have seen thera eighteen years ago, 
when your Board commenced its work here. 
Wliy, they live better, they talk better, and 
they work better. Many of those cabins you 
see, once the abodes of ignorance and vice, 
are now Christian homes, in which you will 
get as good a meal and as clean a bed as you 
would wish, and where j-'ou will see the 
liousehold gather reverently around the fam- 
ily altar." 

Said another Southern gentleman in a 
town in South Carolina, where we have a 
large mission: "Your missionary is doing 
the best work of any man in this country, 
white or black. You can trust the colored 
13 



people who come from his mission." I draw 
these facts from our own work because I 
know v/liereof 1 speak ; but similar facts can 
be given from the missionary work of other 
denominations substantiating the same truth. 
Think of it! — there are in the fifteen Southern 
States and the District of Columbia 16,G59 
colored schools, 44 normal schools, 3G col- 
ored institutions of secondary instruction, 15 
colored tmi versifies and colleges, 22 colored 
schools of theology, 3 colored law schools, 2 
medical schools, and 2 deaf and dumb and 
blind asylums. When it is remembered that 
ail this work is the outgrowth of earnest 
Christian principle, and carried on in faith 
and prayer by earnest Christian people, is it 
credible that the morals of those under such 
influences shoidd remain the same as under 
slavery? Men prejudiced against the Ne- 
groes, and opposed to the work of Northern 
Christians among thera, may think so ; but 
candid and impartial observers of facts can- 
not. 

But, after all that has been said for and 
against the Negro, after all the volumes 
wiiich have been written and spoken about the 
condition and characteristics of the Negro, he 
is simply a man — notliing more and nothing 
less. General Saxton, exarainmg with some 
impatience a long list of questions from some 
philanthropic commission from the North 
respecting the traits and habits of the freed- 
men, bade some stafi" officers answer thera 
all in two words — " Intensely human." The 
Negro is no abnormal creation, requiring a 
diff"erent mode of treatment from other men. 
He is a man, possessing the instincts, pas- 
sions, and powers of a man, and all he needs 
and all he asks is a man's chance. This we 
ought to give him. Lijying aside all color- 
prejudice on the one hand, and all sentiment- 
alism on the other, let him be treated simply 
as a man. Give him the rights, privileges, 
and opportunities of a man, and he will take 
care of himself. We hear constantly of the 
Negro problem. Wh}^ should there be a 
Negro problem any more than a white man 
problem? Tliere is a class of while m.en 
who need missionary and other civilizing 
influences as much as the Negro. 

Now, what is needed for all such people, 
both white and black, is the preacher and 
the teacher, the privileges of the Church and 
tlie school. Our own ancestors, a few cent- 
uries back, dressed in skins and oftered hu- 
man sacrifices to heathen gods, and were 
sold in the slave-marts of Rome; but under 
the benign influences of the Christian religion 
and Christian schools thej' emerged trom 
the darkness of barbarism, and we are to-day 
what we are by the self-sacrifice, toil, and 
blood of the men and women who bore the 
Gospel to them. And the obligation rests 
upon us to send the same precious light 
to those who are in darkness, which, in 
regard to the Negroes, grows a thousand-fold 



194 



CHRISTIAN' EDUCATORS- m COUNCIL. 



stronger on account of the relation we bear 
to them. 

The Negroes are simply a race a century 
or two behind us in Christian privileges and 
the rights of men. Let us give them these 
privileges now, and tliey will work out the 
problem for themselves as our ancestors 
worked out theirs. The white man must 
learn that the Negro is also a man, and treat 
him as such. In his training we must go 
lower than his ignorance, even to tlie depths 
of Ids crushed manhood, and begin there to 
lift him up. Said an educated young colored 
man the other day, one who was born a 
slave : " It is not book-learning that we so 
much need as strong appeals to our manhood, 
and how to use it well. Deliver us from 
cant; give us a solid Christian basis upon 
which to build up this story in the temple of 
our republic." We must take the colored 
Uian by the hand and recognize his worth as 
a man. There is a strong race prejudice in 
us all, much stronger than we can realize 
until it is tested. Born and raised in the 
South, I had this prejudice, and it took a 
mighty force to wrench the wretched thing 
from my heart, so that I could enter the 
humble dwelling of the Negro, sit at his 
table, and accept his hospitality as I would 
that of any other man. And until this 
principle is recognized the work done for the 
freedmen will fail to yield its richest and 
best results. No white man, be he from the 
North or South, can ever teach the colored 
man successfully until he recognizes his 
manhood. As we look on Benjamin Ban- 
nucker, the Negro astronomer; Thomas 
Fuller, the Negro calculator; James Derham, 
the Negro physician; Frederick Douglass, the 
Negro orator; and Dr. Blyden, the Negro 
president, we behold men. Yes, and in the 
six and a half millions of freed slaves we see 
men and women — men and women who have 
been crushed and dwarfed by our hands, and 
we are bound to help them up. Jesus, who 
was anointed to preach the Gospel to the 
poor, and to set at liberty those that were 
bound, has laid the obligation upon us. 

Tlie freedmen have solemn claims upon 
the white race in this land. Here they have 
been enslaved, and have toiled for and en- 
riclied the white man. Here they have been 
emancipated, and here they are to remain as 
citizens and voters, and to share alike with 
us the weal or woe of a common country. 
We made them slaves and treated them as 
such ; and now that they are free American 
citizens, we are bound to treat them as such. 
Our interests, as well as theirs, demand this 
at our hands. 

In regard to evangelistic work, the eman- 
cipation of four millions of slaves was the 
opportunity of the age; and I fear the 
Church has failed to come up to her duty, 
and to take advantage of the opportunity as 
she should. 



The harvest is perishing for the lack of the 
Lord's reapers, and the Lord will hold us re- 
sponsible. 



Summary of the Work of the Pres- 
byterian Board op Missions 
FOR Freedmen. 

The field occupied by the Board lies largely 
in the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Vir- 
ginia, with a few missions in Kentucky 
Florida, and the Indian Territory. 

MISSIONARIES. 

These are preachers, catechists, and teach- 
ers; and in the work under care of the 
Board the present year — including assistants 
in scliools — the number is as follows : 

Ordained ministers, of whom 71 are colored. .84 ) oo 



Licentiates, 

Catechists, 14, all 

* Teachers, males, of whom 83 are 

" females," " 87 " 

158, 



.. 4 



197 



CHURCHES. 

Organized during the year 4 

Whole number under care of the Board 173 

Communicants added on examination 969 ) ^ -.qo 

certificate, 169 f ^'^'^^ 

Average, on examination, to each church, nearly 6 

" " " minister, " 13 

Whole number of communicants 12,823 

Baptized — adults 471 I -, ggg 

" infants S8S j ' 

Marriages reported 295 

Whole "number of Sabbath-schools 156 

" "• scholars in Sabbath-schools.. 10,771 

SCHOOLS. 

Whole number of schools 60 

" " pupils in these. 6,995 

" " teachers 124 

Our schools continue to be strictly paro- 
chial ; and statistical reports from the field 
show that, besides the large amount of " good 
seed" sown in the hearts of the young by 
our missionary teachers, their work still tells 
encouragingly in the way of training in- 
structors FOR THEIR OWN RACE. 

The Board has also under its care, and 
supported by its funds, 

Three Chabtered Institutions: 

Biddle University, Charlotte, N. C. ; 
Scotia Seminary, Concord, N. C. ; 
WaUingford Academy, Charleston, S. 0. 

Two Normal Schools: 

Brainerd Institute, Chester, S. C, 
Fairfield Institute, Winnsboro, S. 0. 



* Besides these, 26 others of our ministers and licen- 
tiates, and 3 catechists, have also been engaged in 
teaching, making in all 124 engaged in teaching. 



EDUCATION IN TEE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR. 



195 



The foregoiBg five institutions report as 
follows : 

Whole number of students enrnlled 1,856 

Nuinbei- of these professors of reh>rion V'i 

Number of these in the Prestiyterian Church 214 

Whole No. studying for the Ui'ispel ministry. 69 

Number of these that are I'resbyleri-ins TO 

Number who have acted as catechists 2(1 

Taught school part of the year 154 

Whole No. of months tauirht this year, over. 49;:i 

Whole No. of pupils in all their schools, about 8,459 
Amount of pay received, in cash and board, 

by all, about S9,0W 



Number who superintended Sabbath -Bchools 

while leachin<,' 83 

Whole No. of scholars in these Sabbath-Buhools 5,li50 

In considering the figures of these tables, 
it should be remembered that those periaiu- 
ing to students for the Gospel minist^y, cat- 
echists, and superintendents of Sabbath- 
schools, came from but four of the five in- 
stitutions named, as Scotia Seminary is for 
girls only. 



WORK OF THE NORTHERN BAPTISTS AMONG THE 
FREEDMEN SINCE THE WAR. 



EEV. H. L. MOREHOUSE, D.D., 

Secretary American Baptist Home Mission Society. 



THE American Baptist Home Mission So- 
ciety, organized in 1832, was the general 
society for the whole Baptist denomination, 
until the .separation between jSTorthern and 
Southern Baptists in 1845, (on account of 
the controversies concerning slavery,) pros- 
ecuting its missionary operations in the South- 
ern States alike among whites and blacks. 
When the doors, barred for sixteen years, were 
opened by shot and shell in 1861, the Society 
prepared to re-enter tiie field. Jaiuiar}"- 30, 
1862, the first man was commissioned by the 
Board of the Society to visit E'ortress Monroe 
and vicinity to investigate and report con- 
cerning the condition of the blacks there 
congregated. Preliminary work having thus 
been done by the Board, the Society, obedient 
to the sentiment of the denomination, at its 
annual meeting in May, 1862, formally and 
energetically entered upon the great under- 
taking which has been unremittingly prose- 
cuted these twenty-one years. 

As illustrating the spirit in which the work 
was begun we quote the resolution adopted 
on that occasion: 

" Whereas, We recognize in the recent 
abolition of slavery in the District of Colum- 
bia, and in the setnng free of thou.sauds of 
bondsmen by the advancement of our national 
armies into the insurgent States, a moral, im- 
pressive indication that Divine Providence is 
about to bre;ik the chains of the enslaved 
millions in our land, and tlius furnish an un- 
obstructed entrance for the Gospel among 
vast multitudes who have hitherto been siait 
out from its pure teachings; and, 

" Whereaf<, We see in the entire reorgan- 
ization of the social and religious state of the 
Soutli, which must inevitably follow the suc- 
cessful overthrow of the rebellion, the Divine 
hand most distinctly and most imperatively, 
beckoning us on to the occupanc}^ of a field 
broader, more important, more promising, 
than has ever yet invited our toils; therefore, 



^'Resolved, That the Society take immediate 
steps to supply with Christian instruction, by 
means of missionaries and teacliers, the eman- 
cipated slaves — whether in the District of 
Columbia, or in other places held by our forces 
— and also to inaugurate a s^vstera of opera- 
tions for carrying the Gospel alike to free and 
bond throughout the whole Southern section 
of our countrj', so fast and so far as the prog- 
ress of our armies and the restoration of or- 
der and law shall open the way." 

Active operations were soon begun at St. 
Helena and Beaufort, S. C, wliere hundreds 
of tlie colored people were converted an(t 
added to the churches. It should be said 
that in many of the Southern States, Baptists 
had devoted mucli attention to the spiritu;d 
interests of the slaves, so that there were 
large numbers connected and meeting with 
the white churches, or sometimes worship- 
ing as branch churches by themselves. It 
is estimated that among 4,000,000 freed- 
men at the close of the war there were nenrly 
400,000 connected, by formal profession, with 
the Baptist chnrclies. 

In 1863 assistants to missionaries in the 
South were sent out "to engage in such in- 
struction of the colored people as will enable 
them to read the Bible and to become self- 
supporting churches." This work awakened 
profound interest in the North, particularly 
tliroughont New England. Contributions 
began to pour into the treasury of the Society, 
and enlargement, as fast as circumstances 
would permit, followed. In 1864 several 
missionaries and fourteen assistants were 
laboruig for the freedmen in the District of 
Columbia, in several places in Virginia, in 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, 
Tennessee, and Louisiana. At the close of 
the war additional emphasis was laid upon 
this department of missionary and educational 
work. President Anderson, of Rocliester, 
also President of the Society, voiced the sen- 



196 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



titnents of Baptists in the North when, in his 
address at tlie annual meetii;^ that year, he 
said : "It has been asked, ' Wiiat will we do 
with the Negro?' God does not require of 
us an answer to this. Our question is, What 
will we do /or the Negro? Grod will tell us 
when it pleaseth liiin what to do with the 
Negro. Let us do our work and leave the 
rest with God. Let us organize them into 
churches and Sunday-schools ; teach them to 
labor and to mtike of themselves men in 
every sense. God will do the rest." 

In 1865 there were sixty-eight laborers in 
twelve Southern States. Twelve teachers in 
Washington, D. C, reported 812 pupils in at- 
tendance that year. The Society took strong 
grounds in reference to the rights of the freed- 
nien, formally affirming as its opinion that 
" Both the undeniable right of the class re- 
ferred to, and the indispensable condition of 
an assured peace and of tlie liighest pros- 
perity of the country, demand that the}^ be 
invested with the eleciive franchise, and with 
all the privileges of whatever kind that belong 
to American citizenship." 

It was also declared that this work must 
be prosecuted by men " emphaticallj'^ loyal to 
good government and to God, and who feel 
the strongest and tenderest sympathy with 
down-trodden humanity," and concerning 
whom " there is the most abundant and un- 
doubted proof that they are oppo.sed to every 
form of oppression." 

The metJiods of the Society included three 
kinds of work, all, however, so clearly related 
to each other that marked lines of separation 
were impossible. Tlie first was the evan- 
gelizRtion of tliefreedmen through the labors 
of devoied missionaries. The next was the 
instruction in Scriptural truth of the colored 
and utterly illiterate preachers. The third was 
the education of all classes, young and old, 
sufficiently nt least to read" the Bible for 
themselves. Some of the best men hi the 
denomination were appointed to hold " Min- 
isters' and Deacons' Institutes." Every mis- 
sionary was expected to be a teacher. In 
1867 fifty-nine teachers in day-schools re- 
ported 6,136 pupils in attendance. Fifty or- 
dained ministers, thirty of them colored, were 
also under appointment. 

Until 1867 there had been some difference 
of opinion in the denomination concerning 
the agency or agencies through which this 
work should be done. From'this time on- 
ward the American Baptist Home Mission 
Society was designated as the single or- 
ganization for this purpose, in connection 
with its general missionary operations ; no 
distinct Society, with the one specific object 
of looking after the educational and religious 
interests of the freedmen, being thought ad- 
visable. Immeiiiately steps were taken to 
establish schools of a higher grade at several 
central points where instruction had been 
imparted to the freedmen, and to occupy other 



points as rapidly as practicable. At the same 
ime elementary or day schools were main- 
tained by missionaries and their assistants, 
who reported I'rom 4.000 to 6,000 in attend- 
ance annually until 1872, when the Societ3''s 
efforts were concentrated chiefly on the high- 
er and permanent institutions. 

The names, Icjcations, and dates of the es- 
tablishment of the institutions founded or 
fostered by the Society, and which at present 
are doing a royal work, are as follows: Way- 
land Seminary, Wasliington, D. 0., where 
work was begun in 1864, established 1867 ; 
Richmond Institute, Va., where work was 
begun in 1865, established 1867; Shaw Uni- 
versity, Raleigh, N. C, where work was be- 
gun in 1865, establislied in 1867; Roger 
Williams University, Nashville, Tenn., where 
work was begun in 1 864, established in 1 866 ; 
Leland University, New Orlciins, La., wheie 
work was begun in 186.^, established in 1870 ; 
the Atlanta Seminary, Atlanta, Ga., (trans- 
ferred from Augusta, where work was begun 
and carried on from 1867 to 1879,) established 
1879; Benedict Institute, Columbia, S. C, es- 
tablished in 1870; Natchez Seminary, Nat- 
chez, Miss., established in 1876, removed to 
Jackson, Miss., in 1883; the Alabama Normal 
and Theological School, at Selma, Ala., started 
by the colored people in 1873, and adopted 
by the Society in 1880 ; the Florida Institute, 
Live Oak, Fla., started hy the colored people 
in 1868, and adopted by the Socieiyin 1880; 
the Kentucky Normal and Theological Insti- 
tute, Louisville, Ky., started by the colored 
people in 1869, and adopted by the Society 
in 1881 ; Bishop College, Marshall, Tex., es- 
tablished in 1881. In 1882 a new site was 
purchased at Atlanta, and a prosperous 
school for young women has been conducted 
under the siuspices of the Suciet3^ Tiiis may 
become a distinct school for girls. Likewise 
a school for girls is projected, and will be 
opened in the full of 1883. at Richmond, Ya. 
In these twelve schools last year there were 
78 teachers and 2,713 pupils. The annual 
running expenses of the scliools are about 
$50,000. 

The actual cost of these school properties 
has been about $400,000. The amount paid 
by the Society for all its missionary and edu- 
cational work among the colored people is 
about $900,000. If to this be added what has 
gone through individual channels, the aggre- 
gate amount contributed by Northern Bap- 
tists for these purposes will exceed $1,000,000. 
The bulk of this has been for Christian edu- 
cation. For several years, also, through gov- 
ernment aid, diiy-sciio'Is have been main- 
tained among the freedmen of the Chociaw 
and Chickasaw Nations in the Indian Terri- 
tory. 

The Woman's Baptist Home Mission So- 
ciety of Chicago, and the Woman's American 
Baptist Home Mission Society of Boston have 
also done much, since their organization in 



EDUCATION m THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAE. 



127 



1877, in sending missionaries iind supporting 
teachers in the institutions mentioned. A 
full summary of wliat Northern Bapti.sts 
have done would also include the Sunday- 
school and colporteur work of the American 
Baptist Publication Society, which has sup- 
ported aininall.v several laborers in the South, 
and has distributed Bibles and other religious 
literature among the destitute. 

All the scliools have normal courses of 
study, most of them an academic course ; 
several a collegiate course; while a specialty 
is made of biblical instruction, and a theologic- 
al course, adapted to the wants of the attend- 
ants, is provided in all. In several schools 
attention is given to industrial education. 

An excellent medical school with suitable 
buildings was opened at Shaw University, 
Raleigh N. C, in 1882. 

From the first, as accommodations would 
allow, both sexe^ have been taught together 
in these institutions. It is estimated that 
about 6,000 different persons have enjoyed 
instruction therein; about 1,200 of wliom 
liave had the ministry in view, while others 
in large numbers have gone forth to teach; 
some of iheni as professors in the institutions. 
Others have b'come editors, legislators, or oc- 
cupied other positions of influence and honor. 

The chartered institutions with their own 
Boards of Trustees are Richmond Institute, 
Shaw Uni\-ersity, Atlanta Seminary, Roger 
Williams University, Leland University, Ken- 
tucky Normal and Theological Institute, Ala- 
bama Normal and Theological Instituie, and 
the Florida Institute. The most valuable 
properties and largest buildings are at Shaw 
University, valued at $125,000; Roger Will- 
iams University, valued at $85,000; and 
Leland Universitv, valued at $85,000. En- 
dowment funds for scholarships or for gen- 
eral purposes, held either by the Society or 
b}'' the Boards of these institutions, amount to 
a little over $65,000. 



In many States the colored people have 
co-operated liberallj', according to tlieir ability, 
in building up these institutions. On the 
Boards of Trustees colored men serve with 
their white brethren, some of whom are 
Southern men. Generally speaking. Southern 
Baptists have had little to do with these ed- 
ucational enterprises begun and carried for- 
ward by their brethren at the Norih. Yet 
there have oeen not a few noble exceptions 
10 this rule; and tliere are growing indica- 
tions of their disposition to liave a part in 
this work which sustains so vital a relation 
to the intelligence and general welfare of 
their own section, where the colored people 
are and are to remain. 

The results of the efforts of which we have 
spoken are most encouraging. The unml)er 
of Baptists among the colored people has 
nearly doubled in the last twenty years, be- 
ing computed now at 800,000. In nearly 
every Southern State they have well-organ- 
ized and well-conducted annual associations 
and general conventions for the considera 
tion of missionary, Sunday-school, and edu- 
cational matters ; while several weekly or 
raomhly religions papers are published and 
sustained by an increasingly intelligent con- 
stituency. 

In view of these things the Baptists of 
the North rejoice that they have been able 
to do something for tlie uplifting of the 
colored people, though conscious tliat their 
work is not yet done; and, with thankful- 
ness to God for the past, they propose to 
press on with courage for the completion of 
what has been so well begun, thus endeavor- 
ing in this respect to discharge in some 
measure their duty as patriots, philanthro- 
pists, and followers of Him who came not to 
be ministered unto but to minister, and give 
himself for the uplifting of the lowly, the 
enlightenment of darkened minds, and the 
redemption of the lost. 



10. SOME SPECIAL RESULTS OF NORTHERN EDUCATIONAL 
WORK IN THE SOUTH-IT MUST BE CONTINUED. 



Rev. R. S. Rust, D.D., Corresponding Secretaiy of the Freedraen's 
Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in an address at Cleve- 
land, O., Oct. 26, 1882, in reviewing the woi'k of that Society, mentioned 
important results outside of simply educational work. The following 
extracts are given : 

OUR work has aided in the introduction of I on the original free-school plan, embracing 
the free school in the South, and acted as all modern improvements, so successfully as 
pioneer in the general educational move- to impress the le^iding citizens and the Legis- 
ment soutiiward. Our teachers have taught latures of several Southern States with the 



198 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



excellence of these schools and their neces- 
sity in securing the elevation and prosperity 
of the people. We must continue this move- 
ment until this wiiole seciiou of country 
shall be dotted with these temples of sci- 
ence. This movement in behalf of popular 
education may meet witli temporary obstruc- 
tions ; in some localities it may be imperiled 
and even temporarily defeated ; but it vidll 
ultimately trinmpli, and rew^ard the people 
with priceless blessings. Amid the ebb and 
flow of the tide of public sentiment, the 
well-tried system of our American free 
schools will rise higher and higher in the 
appreciation of the Southern people, and 
ere long will be anchored among them as 
lirmlj'- as in any other part of our country. 

Our schools have done much in preventing 
the freedmen from becoming Romanists. 
The Papists, under the auspices of the Pope 
and Archbishop Manning, have sent a large 
number of missionaries to labor among this 
people, carefullj'- selecting those who recog- 
nized their manhood and were free from 
prejudice on account of color. They have 
vast resources at their disposal, and expend 
them freely in the accomplishment of this 
object. The freedmen are so anxious to 
learn, that they will attend poor schools 
taught by Papists if Protestants do not fur- 
liisli good ones ; but the instruction of Ro- 
manists disqualifies them from becoming 
loyal citizens or intelligent (Christians. 
There has been no agency in the world so 
well adapted to confront this foe as the 
Freedmen 's Aid Society. Wherever a priest 
or a sister of charity went to proselyte the 
people and organize a church, there they 
found a Methodist to resist the attack. Our 
teachers, with large experience, were in the 
field, our schools were judiciously located, 
and our teachers efficient, enthusiastic, and 
pious. 

Methodism, with its spiritual worship, 
meets a great want of the Negro, wliose 
heart is so susceptible to religious impres- 
sions. Class, prayer, and camp meetings, 
fervent preaching and exhortation, singing 
our songs, and relating Christian experience, 
have proved more than a match for all the 
ceremony and display of the Romish Church, 
and have kept multitudes of freedmen from 
being drawn into the meshes of Romanism. 

Our schools have awakened an interest 
for improvement among the vviiite people. 
Colored ciiildren attend school, acquire 
knowledge and ability to lead useful lives, 
and this fact is a stimulant to arouse white 
clu'Jdren also to go to scl.ool and secure an 
education. It is not a pleasant thing for 
white parents to see their children growing 
up in ignorance and vice, while tiie children 
of colored people attend school, become in- 
telligent, and secure places of trust and 
profit. AVherever a good school is located, 
a great change for the better takes place. 



The appearance, manners, and conduct of the 
people change, and the whites catch the 
spirit tliat prevails and join in the effort for 
improvement, not being willing to be dis- 
tanced in the race for knowledge by those so 
long looked upon by them as an inferior 
people. 

Our schools have greatly improved the 
character of the piety of the freedmen. 
While we condemn the defective piety, bois- 
terous worship, and inconsistent life found 
among the freedmen, we must remember 
that inconsistencies in Christian character 
and life are not peculiar to this people; it is 
possible that some of these blemislies might 
be found in Christians of a lighter hue, and 
we should not, on this accotmt, withdraw 
our confidence from these brethren, and class 
them among tlie unbelievers. We must 
recognize the genuineness of their religion, 
that emotion as well as thought is essential 
to piety, that religious development is 
scarcely less dependent upon feeling thau 
thinking, and that thought only ripens into 
golden fruit when quickened by the inspira- 
tion of emotion. Even truth itself in the 
intellect lies cold and dormant till it enters 
into the affections, inflames the soul, and 
quickens its possessor to a sublime faith and 
iieroic life. The poor, ignorant freedman, 
worshiping God with all tiie light he has, 
struggling to perform the stern duties of life 
with a trustful heart, as well as the scholar 
and the philosopher, is precious in God's 
sight, and shall share in the joys of his 
kingdom. 

An emotional religion, then, must not be 
indiscriminately condemned, for it is the only 
religion that can meet the wants of this poor 
people. We must take care, in educating 
the freedmen, that we do not substitute 
cold formality and an intellectual appreciation 
of the truth for an enthusiastic religious ex- 
perience and a warm heart. Many of the 
freedmen are, without doubt. Christians, and, 
though they may indulge in a mode of life 
and worship repulsive to intelligent and re- 
fined Christians, and in striking contrast 
with the strict requirements of God's law, 
yet great allowance should be made in view 
of their history, ignorance, and neglect ; for, 
in spite of their inconsistencies of lite, they 
often exhibit a faith in God and confidence 
in his protection and love that is irvAj sub- 
lime, and entitles them to recognition hs the 
sons of God and the heirs of eternal life. 

This work in the South is only begun, the 
masses have scarcelj' been reached, and 
those who have so wisely commenced it 
cannot 3'et safely intrust it to inexperienced 
hands. It is not so firmly established and 
secure that its friends may retire and leave 
it to the tender mercies of those who lacked 
the interest and the means to commence it. 
Some ask. Why do you not commit the care 
and support of these schools to the people in 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR. 



199 



the South ? "Why not let them manage these 
institutions instead of controlUng them from 
the North? 

The following considerations indicate the 
embarrassments in the way of the proper 
education of the freedmen by the South : 

The illiteracy of the Southern population, 
as shown by the United States census, is 
fearful, and those wlio are incapable of ap- 
preciating the necessity of an education for 
themselves can have no true conception of 
its importance to others. 

The bad feeling engendered by the loss of 
property, and the failure of the cause for 
which they staked their all, led the whites 
to treat with distrust and contempt any plan 
for the education of the blacks. And, on 
the other iiand, there was a lack of confi- 
dence on the part of the freedmen toward 
ihe whites that prevented their well-meant 
endeavors from being a'ppreciated. 

The people of this section had been edu- 
cated in the idea that the race was an in- 
ferior one, incapable of culture and refine- 
ment, and with such views they could not 
recognize its manhood, nor educate it for 
any condition of life but one of servility. 
They had no objection to the Negro as a 
slave, but they could not endure him as a free- 
man, claiming the prerogatives of freedom. 



And such were the ravages of war and 
the consequent impoverishment of the South, 
that it had not the means to establisli tliese 
schools, neither has it the ability to sustain 
them now. 

The opposition first experienced has well- 
nigh passed away. Olh- motives in organiz- 
ing schools are better understood, and our 
efforts to train the children in science and 
mnrality are more highly appreciated, and 
the marked improvement of our pupils in 
conduct and chai-acter has attracted atten- 
tion, conquered prejudice, and won general 
approval. 

If our Southern friends can aid in this 
great work of the age a hearty welcome 
awaits them. The field is vast, the opi)or- 
tunities great, and the harvest promising. 
While a generous welcome is extended to 
any who can be induced to aid in this iiope- 
ful field, we cannot allow those to retire who 
have consecrated to this enterprise so much 
suffering, sacrifice, prayer, labor, and money. 
Let this good work be carried forward, in 
tlie same spirit and with the same enthusiasm 
in which it originated, and by similar 
agencies, and the grandest results will be 
secured, the people educated, harmony re- 
stored, the Church enlarged, and the nation 



11. WORK OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, THE 

UNITARIANS, AND THE FRIENDS AMONG THE 

NEGROES SINCE THE WAR. 



THE Forty-seventh Annual Report of the 
Committee on Domestic Missions of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, for 1881-82, 
shows that the receipts for missions among 
the colored people that year were $35,115 58. 
$26,821 79 of this was from legacies. 

The amounts spent in those missions that 
year were as follows : 

Florida $50 00 

Georgia 500 00 

Louisiana 500 00 

Maryland 1,437 50 

Mississippi 287 50 

Missouri 550 00 

North CaroHna 4,044 00 

South Carolina 1,433 33 

Tennessee 1,100 00 

Virginia 3,765 00 

Total $13,667 33 

Fifty-five missionaries are supported among 
the colored people, as follows : white clergy- 



men, 13; colored clergymen, 15; lay readers, 
5; teachers, 4; women helpers, 18. 

Missionary teachers and laborers are sup- 
ported in the Southern States also among the 
white people. 

Unitarians. 

Rev. A. D. Mato, of Boston, says : 
In proportion to their numbers and wealth. 
Unitarians, as individuals, Christians, and 
friends of education, liave contributed large 
amounts of money in the South since the war. 
Washington Universitj^, in St. Louis, has been 
established by Dr. W. G. Elliot, and largely 
endowed. Dr. Elliot himself established the 
first free school west of the Mississippi. 

In Baltimore Mr. Pratt has just given a 
million dollars for a free public library. The 
first public schools in Richmond, Va., for 
whites, were established by the Soldiers' 
Memorial Society of Boston, of which Dr. E. 
E. Hale was the moving spirit. Mrs. Augus- 
tus Hemenway, of Boston, has expended 



200 



CHRISTIAN EDU0AT0B8 IN COUNCIL. 



larg;e sums at Hampton, at Miss Bradley's 
school for poor whites in Wilmington, N. C, 
and at Norfolk, Va. 

Tlie wealthy people and churches of the 
denomination have been large and constant 
contributors for student aid, and probably 
twenty to fifty colored schools are supported 
tliereby. Our wealthy people are apt to give 
as readily to orthodox schools and colleges, 
as elsewhere, if convinced that the work is 
worthy of support. 

There are but half a dozen Unitarian 
churches in the Southern States; and, with 
the exception of Wilmington, Del., and a mis- 
sion at Atlanta, nothing new, save in church 
building and paying church debts, has been 
accompiished in tliat region since the war. 

The Friends. 

Elkanah Beard, of Indiana, furnishes the 
following : 

Long before the great political change that 
elevated the Negro race from slavery to tlie 
full rights of citizenship the Society of Friends 
had not only freed their slaves, but had been 
giving attention to the education of the col- 
ored people living in their limits. From j'-ear 
to year our committees located in different 
parts of nearly all the Northern States re- 
ported schools under their auspices for the 
education of the people of color. How many 
were thus taught, or how much money was 
expended prior to the war, I have no means 
of ascertaining. While we deplored the war, 
with all its wide-spread desolation, we were 
ready to embrace every opportunity to relieve 
suffering, and some of our members were 
among the first in the Mississippi Valley to 
render assistance to such as were seeking 
refuge within the Union lines. 

The proclamation of freedom to the enfee- 
bled and unlettered slave added immensely to 
our moral responsibilities, and in 1863 we 
opened three schools in Louisiana, in which 
over five hundred children were taught to 
read and write. The said schools were con- 
tinued for 3'ears, and over one thousand per- 
sons received instruction in them. In 1864 
we opened schools in Arkansas, Mississippi, 
and Tennessee, and at the beginning of the 
year 1865 over 1,100 were in our schools. 
During 1866 the number was swelled to 2,100, 
besides 250 deserted children gathered into 
orphan asylums. During the years 1867, 



1868, and 1869 our schools were well sua- 
tained, and we were higlily gratified with the 
hterary, moral, and religious advancement of 
t!iose under our care. Since then our work 
has centered upon a normal school near He- 
lena, Ark., which is now known as South- 
land College, and is one of the permanent ed- 
ucational institutions of the South. The en- 
rollment for the past year was 277 ; boarders 
inside the college, 52 ; a normal class of 32. 
Most of tills normal class are now teaching 
in several different States, with not less than 
1,000 pupils in charge. Add to these 150 
older teachers, who have gone out from this 
institution, and we have an army in training 
.several thousand strong. 

Tlie people of the North, having carried the 
war for the Union and equal and universal 
freedom to a victorious issue, cannot safely 
relax their educational efforts for the freed 
people until the lessons of self-knowledge, 
self-reverence, and self-control become em- 
bodied in the enduring forms of individual 
and national life. We regard the thorough 
education of such as wiU make practical 
teachers the very best safeguard against dan- 
ger, and in Soutlaland College special pains is 
taken to impress all the students that educa- 
tion and industry must not be divorced, and 
the highest results can be reached only when 
science guides the hand of labor. 

From 1863 to 1878 there passed through 
the hands of Indiana Tearly Meeting's ship- 
ping agent two hundred tons of clothing in 
various forms, nearly one-half of which was 
new goods. During the same time our treas- 
urer's books show about $300,000 in money 
expended in relieving and educating the freed 
people, upon which no per cent, was deduct- 
ed for salaries of officers. 

Since 1877 we have received and expend- 
ed, mostly for educational purposes, $15,500. 
Last year we had a munificent gifl of $25,000 
as an endowment fund. This places South- 
land College on a basis for more permanent 
usefulness. We have no work tliat gives 
us greater satisfaction, or that is more pro- 
ductive of real good, intellectually, morally, 
and religiously. Our scholars have nearly 
all professed conversion, and have attached 
themselves to some Christian Church, and all 
discard the use of tobacco and are total ab- 
stainers from all intoxicants, and many are 
active workers in the much-needed temper- 
ance reform among their own people. 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR. 



201 



12. INDIVIDUAL NORTHERN BENEVOLENCE TO THE SOUTH 
FOR EDUCATION SINCE THE WAR. 



THE North has given to the South for edu- 
cational and Church work, among its poor 
and needy masses, fully $"25,000,000 since 
Appomattox. This has gone chiefly to the 
Negroes, and has been administered mostly 
by the benevolent societies of the various 
Northern Churches. Up to this time tlie 
normal and higher instruction received by 
the Negroes of the South lias been the 
work of Nortliern benevolence. The South- 
ern States are now beginning to have 
schools of higher grades for colored people. 

There have been several large individual 
gifts to the South for education. 

The Vanderbilts of New York have given 
near $1,125,000 for the establishment and 
endowment of Vanderbilt University at 
Nashville, Tenn. This institution is under 
the control of the Metliodist Episcopal 
Church, South. 

Mr. George I. Seney, of New York, has 
given $200,000 for institutions controlled by 
the same Church in Georgia. 

Other individual gifts for smaller amounts 
have been numerous. 



Peabody Educational Fund. 

Tlie Southern States have received large 
help from the Peabod}'' P]ducational Fund, 
tiie first donation being made in 1868. The 
purpose of Mr. Peabody's gift, amounting to 
two millions, the intere.st of whicli only 
can be used, is to aid in tlie establishment of 
a permanent system of public schools in the 
South " free tor the whole people." Its 
gifts are not confined to any race. 

Tlie fund is lield and administered by a 
Board of Trustees, of whicli Rev. J. L. M. 
Curry, D.D., of Richmond, Va., is the general 
agent. Tlie Board, through its general 
agent, not only bestows benefactions, but 
also, in many ways, througli aiding in publi- 
cation of educational journals, holding teach- 
ers' institutes, conventions, etc., has helped 
largely in awakening and directing the edu- 
cational reforms now advancing in the South. 

The gifts of this fund to twelve Southern 
States have been as follows : 

1868 $35,400 

1869 90,000 

1870 90,600 

1871 100,000 

1872 130,000 

1873 137.150 

1874 134,600 



1875 $101,000 

1876 76,300 

1877 89,400 

1878 77,250 

1879 74,850 

1880 55,150 

1881 80,335 

Total $1,272,035 



John F. Slater Fund. 

March 2, 1882, John F. Slater, of Nor- 
wich, Conn., gave $1,000,000 in trust to a 
corporate board, of which ex- President 
I^ayes is chairman. The income of tliis gift 
is to apply "to the uplifting of the lately 
emancipated people of the Southern States 
and their posterity by conferring on them 
the blessings of a Christian education, so as 
to make them good men and good citizens."' 
Rev. Atticus G. Haygood, D.D., of Georgia, 
is general agent of this fund. No distribu- 
tions have yet been made, but the policy of 
the Trustees is to train teachers from among 
those to be taught, and to encourage such 
institutions as most effectually promote this 
work. After thirty-three years the Trustees 
may, if they deem it best, "apply the capital 
of the fund to the establishment of founda- 
tions subsidiary to those already-e-xisting in- 
stitutions of higher education in such wise 
as to make the educational advantages of 
such institutions more freely accessible to 
poor students of the colored race." 



Paul Tulane's Gift. 

Mr. Paul Tulane, of Princeton, N. J., in 
June, 1882, gave property estimated as 
worth $1,000,000 " for the promotion and 
encouragement of intellectual, moi'al, and in- 
dustrial education among the wliite young 
persons in the city of New Orleans, and for 
the advancement of letters, the arts, and the 
sciences therein." 



SOUTHERN CHURCHES AND EDUCA- 
TION SINCE THE WAR. 
The sentiment of all Southern Churches 
is gradually becoming f;xvorable to common- 
school systems supported by the States, and 
which will give educational facilities to all 
the youth. These Churches formerly beheved 
in parochial or select schools, which practi- 
cally limited education to the few. 



202 



CHRISTIAN EDTIGAT0B8 m COUNCIL. 



In the matter of denominational schools, 
advance is being made, and many heroic 
men and women are found in all these 
Cliurches who are leading in the work of 
building and endowing seminaries and col- 
leges. Many institutions were wiped out by 
the war. Many others are yet struggling 
with poverty. Only the few can be said to 
prosper. As the commercial prosperity of 
the South increases, these schools will grow. 

As to education among the Negroes, the 
Southern Churches have begun to do some- 
thing, but the great mass of Southern Chris- 
tians who thinlc at all on this subject are 
studying two questions: "Can the Negro 
be educated?" and "What kind and quan- 
tity of education is best for the Negro if he 
has any at all ?" 



In each Church a few splendid men are 
taking hold of this work, and seeking to 
awaken their respective denominations. The 
Metliodist Episcopal Church, South, by Gen- 
eral Conference action, is committed to Ne- 
gro education. It is proposed to establish 
an educational institute at Augusta, Ga., 
immediately. 

The Southern Presbyterians have an insti- 
tute for Negro preachers at Tuscaloosa, Ala., 
where, up to this time, a small class has 
been taught each year. 

The Southern Baptists have as yet done 
very little except to partake of the growing 
sentiment that the Negro must be educated, 
and to co-operate in kind words with North- 
ern Baptists who have engaged heartily in 
the work. 



13. ROMAN CATHOLICISM AND THE NEGRO. 



It is difficult to secure exact data upon the work of Roman Catholics 
among the Negroes since the war. Something is being done by them, 
but as yet but little comparatively has been accomplished, and in the 
presence of an aggressive Protestantism, the Negroes cannot be won to 
Catholicism. The showy worship of that Church may for a time attract 
the thoughtless and simple among them, but the Negro is Protestant by 
instinct. 



14. EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH. 



EEV. J. G. VATJGHAN, B.D., 
Pastor Ames Methodist Episcopal Church, New Orleans, La. 



I WILL use the word " South " as applying 
to that section of our coimtry formerly 
known as slave territory. Differences re- 
sulting from the late war in part, but having 
their origin long before, have existed be- 
tween this section and the North. The in- 
terests of the Southern producer and of the 
Northern manufacturer are not and never 
have been identical. There are other, and 
prominent, causes that have led to a differ- 
ence between the two sections. Previous to 
the war the laborers in the North were citi- 
zens and freemen ; in the South they were 
bondmen, slaves, and property. Some had 
previously been such in the North. The 



North, having the greater voice in govern- 
ment, began to legislate against slavery, 
admitting certain Territories as States on the 
condition that they were not to become slave 
States. This policy was naturally resented 
by the South. The people of the two .sec- 
tions became estranged from a lack of 
acquaintance. Early in our country's his- 
tory tlie West began to develop and promise 
rich returns for capital and labor, so the 
lines of travel, emigration, and the routes of 
commerce turned westward, leaving but 
little communication between the North and 
the South. For more than twenty years 
preceding the late war sectional books ap- 



EDUCATION m THE SOUTH SINGE THE WAR. 



203 



peared, iu both the North and tlie South, 
magnifying the interests, institutions, and 
advantages of their own section, by compar- 
ing them with similar interests in the oppo- 
site section, which comparisons were often 
odious and produced unpleasant feelings. 
Finally, the civilization in the North and the 
South are not the same. 

Tiie lines of caste are now and always 
have been closely drawn in the South. The 
caste system could be carried out very easily 
under the old slavery regime. It was done 
so successfully that a semi-feudal civilization 
pervaded the entire South, and still rules 
with an iron hand all social and local inter- 
ests. These things have all had their in- 
fluence on the moral and intellectual condi- 
tion of the Southern people. Arbitrary 
human slavery has never been productive of 
high moral principles. Take any country or 
any section of country where it has existed 
for any considerable time, and its tendency 
has been to loosen the morals, lessen the 
energy, and increase the ignorance of the 
people. What shall I say of the South ? the 
land I love, the land of my own nativity, the 
land beneath whose soil the ashes of my 
forefathers lie ? Honesty compels me to 
s;iy it is no exception to the rule. The war 
did not lessen the difiereuces between tlie 
North and the South. Terminating as it did, 
we have no right to expect that it would 
have done so. The South fought for what 
she believed to be right, and held out against 
great odds with the desperation of death. 
Fmally she was whipped, overcome, subdued, 
but not conquered. Unpleasant conditions 
were forced upon her. Has she not accepted 
these conditions as gracefully as we could 
reasonably expect? 

More tlian four millions of slaves, whom 
the people had always looked upon as their 
property, were emancipated and made citi- 
zens of the United States, with all the privi- 
leges pertaining to citizenship. 

A greater question never arose in Ameri- 
can history than the one thrust upon the 
people at that time. The question was ; Cp,n 
the master and the slave be reconciled, 
recognize each other as citizens, and live in 
peace and prosperity under the same laws? 

At first there was wild speculation on both 
sides. The Northern people, viewing the 
question with their characteristic coolness 
and common-sense, saw that the solution of 
the problem lay in the education of both 
races. I say both races, because the colored 
people were almost wholly destitute of edu- 
cation, and the lower class of whites was in 
a like pitiable condition. The Northern 
people were interested because they knew 
how dangerous a thing the right of franchise 
was in the hands of people who could not 
read their ballots. The South had not sufB- 
cient means at the close of the war to edu- 
cate tliese people ; furthermore, those in 



power were not favorable to the education 
of the masses. Principally because the 
prejudice against the colored people was so 
strong as to preclude them very largely from 
the public schools, the Northern people 
began one of the grandest enterprises that 
ever originated in man's brain and found 
expression through philanthropists' pockets. 

The country had been engaged in a bloody 
war, but, when it ended, ere the roar of the 
cannon had fully ceased, and the smoke of 
battle fairly cleared away, and before the 
grass had grown green over the graves of 
the dead heroes, the Northern patriots began 
to " beat their swords into plowshares and 
their spears into pruning-hooks," and reach 
forth a helping hand to the defeated and 
fallen. Missionaries and teachers were sent 
into the South and supported by Northern 
money. Thus in the past eighteen years 
the North has sent into the South the mag- 
nificent sum of twenty-five millions of dollars 
for educational and evangelical iKirposes. 
Nothing has so touched and mollified the 
hearts of the Southern people as this mag- 
nificent charity. At first the work was not 
favorably received in many parts of the 
South. The people naturally asked. What 
is the object of this work iu the South? 

Many of them believed it was a " Yankee 
trick " to get the votes of the colored people. 
After observing the progress of the work 
for years, and noting the courage and devo- 
tion of the leaders, Drs. Hartzeli, Rust, and 
the sainted Bishop Haven, and many others 
whom I might mention, they are beginning 
to exclaim, " Whj^, these men are not poli- 
ticians ! " Thousands of colored people have 
learned more than this, and are exclaiming, 
"No, they are not politicians; they are the 
advance-guard of the armies of the Lord that 
are on their way to the South to lift from 
our people the clouds of superstition and 
ignorance." 

Notwithstanding the great work done in 
the South during ttie past sixteen years in 
education and evangelization, this section is 
yet in a pitiable condition. Tliere are six 
millions of children of school age in tlie 
Southern States, and only one half of this 
number were enrolled in the public schools 
last year. In some of the States the per 
cent, of the children enrolled in the schools 
is becoming smaller each year, and the 
schools are becoming less efficient each year. 
This has long been the case, and the result 
is plainly visible. In all the Gulf States 
south of Virginia more than one half the 
entire population that is over ten years of 
age cannot read. In some States the per 
cent, of illiteracy is mtich larger thata I have 
stated, but the average, taking all together, 
is a fraction over one half. 

This illiteracy is about proportionately 
divided between the two races. Formerly 
the larger per cent, was among the colored 



204 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



people, but not so now. Any person who 
will investigate the matter honestly must 
admit that education is making more rapid 
progress among tiie colored than among the 
ignorant white people of the South. This 
fact is explained when we remember that 
the colored people have much better oppor- 
tunities in many places than have the whites. 
The various religious denominations have 
taken their education in hand, and are push- 
ing it forward independently of public 
schools. This was a necessity, for in many 
of the country districts the public money 
will not run the schools two months during 
the year. It is evident, if education makes 
much progress in the South, it must be done 
for some time through other channels than 
the present public-school system. From 
these causes and to this end the Methodist 
Episcopal Church is hi the South. There is 
no mission field in the Church whe e the 
time, labor, and money given yield so rich a 
return as in this Southern field, and yet there 
are no causes to wiiich some of our people 
contribute so reluctantly. Some have ex- 
plained this by claiming that our leaders 
have been recreant to the trust given them 
by recognizing the color line. Sixteen years 
of labor in the South have demonstrated the 
fact that each race prefers a separation from 
the other in schools and churches. No bars 
are put between the two races — they divide 
naturally. The time will doubtless come 
when it will not be so, but now it is a fact, 
not only in the South, but from Maine to 
Mexico and from New York to San Fran- 
cisco. 

The Methodist Church is not in the Sontii 
as an experiment, for it is now a demon- 
strated reality that it is a grand success. In 



the past sixteen years she has built on what 
was slave territory three thousand three 
hundred and eighty-five churches, (.3,385.) 
She has forty-three colleges and seminaries, 
with an enrollment of nearly twenty thousand 
students (20,000.) The increase of white 
members during the past sixteen years has 
been 133,640, which exceeds by 20,000 the 
entire membership of our Church in the six 
New England Conferences. Tlie increase of 
the colored members during the same period 
has been 159,000. 

Our total gain during the past sixteen 
years has been 292,640 on what was once 
slave territory. 

If figures and facts do not lie, let me ask 
you what these figures mean ? To my mind 
they say that the Methodist Episcopal Church 
in the Southern States is making a grand 
record in the work of saving the masses. 

Do not get the idea that the people are 
depending wholly on the North for aid ; they 
are helping themselves as fast as they can. 
At the last session of the Louisiana Annual 
Conference the contributions to benevolent 
purposes amounted to nearly four thousand 
dollars. This is a grand showing when we 
remember this contribution represents the 
offering of only twelve thousand members, 
and most of them only a few j^ears out of 
slavery. The idea is prevalent that the 
golden age of the South has passed ; but not 
so, it is yet to come. Barriers to Southern 
progress are rapidly passing away. A new 
and brighter period than has yet dawned 
upon the South is in the near future. God 
hasten the day when the land of perpetual 
flowers and balmy breezes shall be redeemed 
from the thralldom of ignorance, when peace 
shall be her song, and prosperity her joy 1 



15. ILLITERACY AND POVERTY IN THE SOUTH. 



Rev. J. L. M. CuKRT, D.D., of Richmond, Va., General Agent of the 
Peabody Educational Fund, in an address on " The National Problem 
of Southern Education," says : 



THE South, at heav};- pecuniary cost, is ma- 
turing and perfecting school systems for 
free and universal education. I make bold 
to affirm that the Southern States, by any 
rate of taxation likely to be sustained at the 
ballot-box, cannot give free education to all 
youth between tlie ages of eight and eight- 
een. The condition of the South is little un- 
derstood. In twenty years there have been 
signs of improvement, but lectures and arti- 



cles on " The New South " often give rose- 
colored and exaggerated ideas of the prog- 
ress. In raining, manufacturing, stock-rais- 
ing, trucking, railway communication, there 
has been marked growth, but in general ag- 
riculture bold generalizations are needed to 
establish the theory of prosperity. Unintel- 
ligent and unskilled labor is a serious draw- 
back to any country. A comparison of the 
assessed valuation of personal property and 



EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINGE THE WAR. 



20^ 



real estate for 1860, 1870, and 1880, drawn 
ivom census reports, will sliow most condu- 
sively the paralj'sis of the South, and the 
slowness and difficulij' of recovery: 



States. 


1860. 


1870. 


1880. 


Ala 


$432,198,763 


$155,582,595 


$122,867,228 


Ark 


180,5 11, *i) 


94,528,843 


86,406,3t>4 


Fla 


68,9,29,685 


32,480,843 


30,938,309 


Ga 


61S,-J3::.',387 


227,219,519 


239,472,599 


Ky 


528,212,6;);:J 


400,254,294 


3.i0,563,9n 


La 


43T,7S7,265 


253,371,890 


160,162,4:39 


Miss.... 


509,472,912 


177,278,890 


110,628,129 


N. U. .. 


292,297,602 


130,378,622 


156,100,202 


S.C 


489,319, 12-i 


18:3,912,337 


133,560,135 


Tenn.... 


382,495,200 


253,782,164 


211,778,538 


Tex 


267,792,335 


149,732,929 


320,364,515 


Va 


657,021,336 


365,439,917 


308,45.5,135 


W.Va.. 




140,558.273 


139,622,705 









Total.. 


$4,863,970,63.j 


$2,573,792,113 


$2,370,923,269 



During the decade from 1870 to 1880 there 
lias been a decrease in valuation in all these 
States, except Georgia, North Carolina, and 
Texas. In Texas the causes are obvious. 
"While the population in these States has 
steadily increased, the ability to pay taxes 
has diminished. The Negroes ara scarcely 
to be counted as a tax-paying element. Their 
taxable propei'ty is in.significaut in compari- 
S'ln vvitii their numbers. If one contemplates 
the just conclusions from these sad statistics, 
he will be prepared to indorse the vigorous 
saying of Genera] Siierman, more condensed 
and expressive than the French proverb, that 
"War is hell." 

General reflections on the evils of illiterate 
suffrage are of painfully practical interest 
when applied to tiie Smith. A few uou-tax- 
paying illiterate voters of the same race niiy:lit 
be comparatively haruiless, as the importance 
of the votes would be proportionately litile. 

The following table furnishes food for prof- 
itable reflection : 



Alabama 

Arkansas 

Florida 

Georgia 

Kentucky.. 

Louisiana 

Mississippi. . . 
Nortli Carolina 
South Carolina 

Tennessee 

Texas 

Virginia 



Votiuff pop- 


Votes cast in 


ulHti'in. 


1830. 


259,884 


151,507 


182,977 


106,229 


61,697 


51,618 


321,438 


15.5,651 


376,221 


264,304 


216,787 


97,201 


238,532 


117,078 


294,750 


241.218 


205,789 


170,9.56 


330.305 


247,827 


380,:376 


241,478 


334,505 


212,135 



132,.526 
59,340 
25,319 
1.59..506 
107,7:30 
106,8')1 
117,9.55 
145,294 
117,195 
122,836 
93,472 
142,622 



In Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nortli 
Cirolina, and South Carolina one half of the 
voting population cannot read the ballots 
tiiey cast. In Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee, 
and Virginia the number of illiterates equals 
or exceeds half the number of those who vot- 



ed at the presidential election in 1880. In 
Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi there are 
more illiterate voters than there were votes 
cast in the election of 1880 1 In every Si)Utli- 
eru State, and in many Northern and West- 
ern Stales, the illiterate adults hold the bal- 
ance of power ! These revelations of the cen- 
sus "ought to overwhelm with shame and 
stimulate every power of the national intel- 
lect, and command every dollar within reach 
of the taxing power to provide a remedy 
equal to the terrible disea.se." What a trav- 
esty is such illiterac}' upon the elective fran- 
chise! what a contemptible farce is a formal 
election ! The most fervid imagination can- 
not over color. 

Before the war educational facilities were 
liberally and adequately provided at the 
South for a portion of the white population. 
There were academies and colleges of a high 
order for the training of both sexes. For 
the education of a large number of white 
children the provision made was meager and 
inadequate. No State had a system of free 
scliools. To those who seek causes for re- 
buke and censure, this failure to furnish 
means of even rudimentary education for the 
whole white population is a far more serious 
and plausible groiuid of attack than many 
which ignorance and prejudice have greedily 
seized upon. 

If even half of what has been affirmed be 
true, then the exigenc^v is perilous, summon- 
ing the united and gigantic efforts of every 
patriot and Christian. Illiteracy is a natioiud 
peril. Its removal is a national prol)lem. 
The school population of the United Siates 
is 18,000,000. Seven and one half millions, 
or five twelftlis of the whole, are growing up 
in absolute ignorance of the English alpha- 
bet. The free-school system is the corner- 
stone of our republic, and popular education 
is the onlj^ safe and stable Ijnsis for popular 
Uberty. Wisely the New England States 
and their descendants interwove public 
schools into the "very thread and texture of 
their civil institutions." The cause of frfc 
government, and the cause of universal edu- 
cation, are one. Men cannot be educated to 
be slaves. "No instruction imparted can so 
pervert the human faculties as to make nic-n 
believe that their normal or rightful condition 
is servitude." If education had been uni- 
versal African slavery had been impossil)le, 
and that problem would not have perplexed 
American statesmanship, or wrouglu sec- 
tional alienation. 

Ignorance is the hand-maid of despotism, 
the implacable foe of freedom. General Gar- 
lield, in his letter accepting the nomination 
for the Presidency, said: "Next in impor- 
tance to freedom and justice is popular educa- 
tion, without which neither freedom nor 
justice can be permanently maintained." 



206 CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 

On motion of Rev. Lemuel Moss, D.D,, of Indiana, the National Edu- 
cational Assembly for 1883 adopted the following : 

Resolved^ That the Christian men and women who in the past twenty years have labored 
as teachers and missionaries from the North in the South, healing the wounds of war and 
laying tiie foundations of all social order in intelligence and virtue, deserve and have our 
heartiest thanks, our highest honor, our profoundest gratitude. Their praise is in all the 
Churches, and their record is on high. While the American Union stands, while Ciiris- 
tian cizilization lasts, these workers and their work will abide in growing influence, luster, 
and power. 



A telegram was received during the Assembly from the Shreveport 

District Conference, then in session, as follows: 

Shreveport, La., Aug. 9, 1883. 
Rev. Dr. J. C. Hartzbll, Conductor National Education Assembly : 
The Slireveport District Conference, now in annual session in this city, sends greeting and 
bid you Godspeed. The supreme need of our people is the Bible and spelling-book. God 
bless the efforts of the National Education Assembly! His South-land and this nation 
must be flooded with the blessings of Christian education. 

Stephen Duncan, President. 
M. E. V. Chapman, Secretary. 



IX. CHRIST IM AMERICAN EDUCATION. 



1. SERMON : THE CHRISTIAN ELEMENT IN EDUCATION. 



EEV. LEMUEL MOSS, D.D., 
President Indiana University. 



I "WILL take as the subject of my discourse 
this morning tlie Gospel according to Mat- 
thew, the 24th chapter and 25th verse, 
" Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my 
word shall not pass away." 

I desire to bring this morning a message 
of encouragement and strength. I remember 
that just twenty years ago, within a few 
weeks, it was my privilege to address a large 
gatliering of soldiers at the front. On the 
morning after our service the Army of the 
Potomac was to break camp and start out 
on an uncertain march. I found them gath- 
ered about their camp-fires, and, as they 
made a little pathway for me to pass into 
the midst of the gathering where I might 
speak to them, one tall and stahvart soldier 
whispered in my ear, as I passed him, " Say 
something to encourage us, wont you?" 
He was thinking of the march, of the peril, 
of the enemy, and his heart yearned for 
some word in all these circumstances of trial 
that should give to him comfort and strength. 
We are gathered here to-day as soldiers of 
Jesus Christ; we belong, I trust, to the 
Lord's hosts. We are confronted constantly 
with the trials and with the perils of battle ; 
we are, if true to our Leader and our Lord, 
ever oh the march or ever in the engagement. 
And often and again wlien these terrible 
trials are upon us, and these perils are be- 
fore us, and the earnest longing of the heart 
is toward the battle-field, and the yearning 
of the soul is for victory in God's name, 
there comes to us the desire for encourage- 
ment, that encouragement that can come to 
us only from the abiding and strengthening 
word of God. " Heaven and eartla shall pass 
away;" all this magnificent universe that 
we see, and hear, and rejoice in, shah pass 
away as a scroll ; the mighty sea shall cease 
its rolling and its roar; but the word of 
God, the word of Jesus Christ who is God, 
siiall never pass away. 

We have been gathered here, and are 



gatiiered now. to look great difSculties in 
the face, to study the problems that vex our 
hearts and try our minds, to see if there be 
any way out of this wilderness of difficulty 
and awe, of peril and distress. We have 
been looking at tiiese great questions of illit- 
eracy, of pauperism, of crime, and we have 
been asking. Is there any solution? Do not 
the problems multiply with every step of our 
advancement? Do not the questions seem, 
under every solution, more difficult, more 
perplexing, than those which we have par- 
tially understood and settled ? I wish to 
ask you to consider the great comforting fact 
that so many, in the providence of God, have 
been settled; that by the power of Divine 
grace and the ever-present energy of the 
Holy Spirit, tliere have been introduced into 
our civilization and our life some great 
forces tliat are ruling and are to rule the 
world ; that these great energies of God's 
truth that never sleep, that never relax, that 
never weaken, are to work out their own in- 
herent power, to renew, to uplift, to prove, 
to sanctify, to save, the race. In behalf of 
our interests we are gathered to think, and 
deliberate, and plan. And so, as I speak to 
you of the Christian element in education, I 
wish to ask especial attention to what Chris- 
tianity has done, what forces it has intro- 
duced, what great principles it has estab- 
lished, by the inner working of wliicli many 
of these great questions are to be answered, 
many of these great difficulties are to be al- 
leviated and removed. 

What do we mean by education ? What 
is it that, first of all, Christianity emphasizes 
with reference to this mighty work ? What 
is the point of view it gives us ? WJiat the 
standing ground? Christianity emphasizes 
the wortli of him for whom this educating 
work is done. Ciiristianity emphasizes the 
worth of man, and it was not until the com- 
ing of Christ, the God-man, the Son of man, 
the Saviour of man — it was not until Jesus 



308 



CERISTIAN EDXTGAT0R8 IN COUNCIL. 



Christ came and lived and taught and 
wrought and died and rose again that this 
great truth of man's individuality and worth 
was understood. We understand now, by 
the influence of Christianity, that all things 
on earth stand in direct relationship to the 
perfecting of the individual soul ; the man- 
hood of man is a truth of substantive value 
standing by itself, and all the institutions of 
society are contributing, and are intended to 
be tributary, to his upbuilding and perfecting. 
Man does not exist for the State, but the 
Slate for man ; man does not e.xist for the 
Church, but the Church for man ; man does 
not exist for society, but society for man. 
All these institutions of Divine origin, of 
Divine sanction, of Divine efficiency, are in- 
stitutions intended for the training, for the 
discipline, for the upbuilding, for the per- 
fecting of bim who is made in the likeness 
of God and renewed after the likeness of 
Jesus Christ. And this truth is working to- 
day. Slowly we are coming to appreciate it, 
to beheve it, to act upon it, to allow it to 
live in us as a perpetuating and quickening 
power. Man, of different race, of different 
color, of different clime, of different condi- 
tion, wherever he may be found, whatever 
ma_y be his religion, whatever may be his 
pursuit, man stands before God and before 
his fellows as a being of infinite worth, hav- 
ing in him the capacities of limitless develop- 
ment, having in him the value of an endless 
life. And this whole question of education, 
how it becomes lifted, how it becomes en- 
larged, how it becomes lustrous with the 
Divine glory, when we state that by educa- 
tion we mean the lifting of man out of his 
feebleness, setting him on that career whose 
goal is absolute perfectness. Do you ask 
for testimonies of man's worth ? You find 
them every-where. All nature ministers to 
him. He is permitted to stand at the center 
of these mighty forces tliat permeate and 
pervade the universe of God ; they carry 
his messages, they give to him the luxuries 
of life, they feed him with the dainties of the 
earth, and bring to him angel food and Di- 
vine service. Do you ask for testimonies to 
the worth of the individual man ? I hear a 
voice from heaven, " God so loved the world, 
that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in him should not per- 
ish, but have everlasting life." And as I 
trace the footsteps of the Son of God to 
Bethlehem, to Gethsemane, to Calvary, from 
Calvary to Bethany and to heaven, I hear in 
every word of his, I see in all his life, a tes- 
timony to the value of man, whose redemp- 
tion he undertook, whose redemption he 
achieved, whose Lord and Sovereign he is, 
who shall be recognized as the Saviour of 
the life that is to be conformed to his own, 
and perfected into the likeness of his own 
Divine image. 

Now, we may be discouraged, we may be 



discomfited, we may find ourselves in peril, 
confronted by difficulties when we look at 
these great questions that are confronting us 
to-day, and we ask, How is this profligacy, 
how is this ignorance, how is this terrible 
stupidity, how is all this squalor and crime 
to be reached? How? By the persistent, 
by the incessant, activity that comes from 
the belief that God made man in his own 
image and redeemed him by the blood of 
Jesus Christ, that his word shall abide for- 
ever and accomplish its Divine purpose. If 
he shall never fail nor be discouraged until 
he has establislied his law, surely we, taking 
hold upon the work that he has accomplished, 
may follow in his footsteps with patience 
and confidence and assurance. 

But Christianity has not only emphasized 
the individual value of him for wiiom we 
labor, it has emphasized also the instrumen- 
tality by which we seek to accomplish our 
end. What is the great instrumentality in 
education ? In a word, it is the truth. We 
hope to reach these inherent and limitless 
capacities of man, we hope to develop them 
into symmetry and perfectness by the im- 
partation of the truth, all truth, all kinds of 
truth, the truth of science, the truth of art, 
the truth of liierature, the truth of religion. 
We hope to bring man to a recognition of 
his fundamental and permanent relations, 
relations to the world around him, relations 
to the brethren close about him, relations to 
the God who made him and the universe 
that he inhabits. And you recognize the 
very significant truth that it was not until 
the apprehension of the value, of the efficacy, 
of truth as truth that these great modern 
movements of science and literature and art 
in aid of education became a possibility. 

It is not until men recognize the supreme 
importance of a fact tliat thev will labor to 
ascertain what the fact is. You sometimes 
wonder why men will devote themselves for 
a life-time, year after year, in the patient in- 
vestigation of some very limited domain of 
science, or art, or literature, or theology, or 
whatever it may be. How is it that a man 
can fix his attention on some minute part of 
this existence, and hold his gaze there until, 
by the intense and incessant looking, he 
shall come to the understanding of some law, 
of some force, of some energy, that is at 
work in human history, that is at work in 
nature, animate or inanimate, and perhaps 
be able to announce on a single page the 
results of a life-time of endeavor and persist- 
ent toil? Why does he do it? Because 
there has been borne in upon him through 
this Christian emphasizing of the value of 
the truth the supreme importance of finding 
a single fact. He wishes to know what is, 
and why it is, and how it is, understanding 
very well that if he reaches the significance 
of a single truth, then other truths will be- 
come emphasized, aud by and by, each la- 



CHRIST IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 



209 



boring in his own way, in his own place, 
following his own line of inquiry, the result 
will be some apprehension of the meaning of 
this miglity life that pulsates through us, 
and of tiiis mighty world, in ti:e midst of 
which we stand, and through which we are 
permitted to look. 

Now we have come to this recognition of 
the value of tiie truth through Him who 
said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the 
life. No man cometh unto the Father " — 
an apprehension of God, an acquaintance 
with God, and a communion with God — 
"but by me." So I say to-day, it is a 
matter of great comfort, of great encour- 
agement, to the Christian teacher and to 
the worker, wherever he may be, to know 
that Christianity has lodged in the heart of 
our modern life this conception of tlie infinite 
value of the truth. And men will not rest. 
There may be delay; there may be hin- 
derances; there may be obstacles ; there may 
be many eddies in the current ; there may 
be m-iny windings in the path ; but men 
will not rest since this truth has been 
brought to tliem and illustrated as it lias 
been until they know all that can be known, 
masiering by their knowledge and forces the 
energies tliat are waiting to wait upon them, 
mastering also some conception of them- 
selves and of their relation to this world in 
which we live, this world of finite propor- 
tions now and growing into infinite propor- 
tions in the ages to come. 

Here is the third great truth that Chris- 
tianity imparts to this mighty movement we 
call by the comprehensive name of educa- 
tion. It has to do with the method by which 
the result is reached. It is a very curious 
fact that man is the most helpless of all tlie 
beings that are born on the earth when he 
is born ; more completely dependent, and 
not only dependent, but absolute in his ig- 
norance. How helpless he is, and for how 
long a time he remains helpless! You try 
sometimes to measure the distance between 
the infant Newton lying helpless in his 
nurse's arms and Newton, the Christian 
philosopher, passing from world to world 
througliiout these limitless regions of space, 
measuring their distance, and weighing their 
masses, and binding the universe of God into 
the order of law; and when you trj'' to meas- 
ure the distance between the one and the 
other, you see it is a matter of development, 
of unfolding tlie enlargement of capaciiies, 
and as you think upon it, and ponder it, 
and try to understand this mysterj^ that is 
ever soing on before your eyes, in j^our own 
household and in your own school, you see 
that this mastery of himself by man is 
tlirougli the mastery of the world that is 
around him, and all at once the pursuits and 
activities of men take on new significance. 

You ask why is it that the earth must be 
cultivated? Why is it that our seas must 
14 



be turned into highways of commerce? 
Whj'^ is it that men, generation after genera- 
tion, must tax themselves to learn how to 
live and how to master the forces of nature 
that are about them? Why is it that they 
must toil as for their very lives that our 
mountains may be tunneled, that our rivers 
may be bridged, that all hindcrances to 
growth may be removed? Why is it? 
Man finds nowliere just that which ho wants. 
Here are the forests, here are the mines ; 
but if he is to build himself a shelter, or de- 
fend himself against the cold, he must go 
out and master these things, and mold them 
to his uses. He must conquer the world 
and compel it to serve him, or it will be 
his death; for in his helplessness, without 
these aids and resources he must perish; 
and so it is a hand-to-hand tight. He 
must overcome the world or be overcome 
by it, and so every city that he builds, 
and every bridge that he constructs, and 
every ship tliai he sets afloat, is but a 
monument that he rears to the mastery of 
the world. He says by it, "I have over- 
come and made that which would have 
been my death my life." 

Now, why all this ? Certainly not for tho 
bridge's sake; certainly not for the sea'.s 
sake; certainly not for the sake of these 
magnificent minerals and marbles that are 
hidden in the earth. All this toil and inven- 
tion and activity and industry are for man's 
sake. Man must conquer this world in or- 
der that he may conquer himself He must 
subdue these energies in order that he may 
subdue himself, and in becoming God's serv- 
ant lie becomes the master of the world. 
We see at once how all the pursuits and vo- 
cations of life become lifted into a new sig- 
nificance. They are not for themselves; 
they are for us. They are the means of our 
discipline ; they are the avenues of our in- 
fluence ; they are the ways along wliich the 
virtue comes that passes from us to others, 
that stimulates and strengthens and quickens 
and lifts them up; and the entire universe 
becomes for us a school-house. And so I 
say, the great truth that this is God's uni- 
verse, that this is God's world, and, as his 
world, is the training-place for men, is 
brought to us by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, 
by him who made all tilings and for whom 
all things are and by whom all things con- 
sist, showing to us that this great work thus 
begun and carried on shall never go back. 
This mighty truth is working in the hearts 
and thoughts and lives of men, and shall 
work until it liecomes a universal and evejy- 
where accepted truth. Tliis universe is not 
orphaned. It has not been abandoned by 
Him who made it, if it ever was made; but 
it is God's universe ; it is the great method 
of communication to the mind of him who 
was made in His imaiic, and all the words 
of heaven become vocal as different voices 



210 



GHRI8TIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



speaking to him ; and this universe, instead 
of shntVing hitn out, is but the telephone 
between the ear of the Infinite Fatlier and 
the obedient child. This great truth is work- 
ing in the hearts and minds of men, and 
when we are perplexed, when we are dis- 
couraged, when infidelity comes and seems 
to denj'' this truth, and when these evil in- 
fluences wait upon us and dishearten us, let 
us comfort ourselves with the thought that 
the truth is mightier than all these opposing 
energies, that this world shall never go back 
again into this domain of darkness and sin ; 
and with t,he luminous truth that shines 
brighter than the sun in heaven that this is 
God's world and is intended and adjusted to 
be a training-place of his creatures, and we 
shall have songs in the night and glad voices 
in the day to know that we are in God's 
training-school. 

I have spoken of the being who has to be 
trained, and of the great iustrumentality and 
of the method through the knowledge of the 
universe and of the Divine Providence that 
Is moving through it. I wish to speak a 
moment of the end, of the goal, the outcome, 
that leads on in this miglitj' work that we 
call by this wondrous name, education. What 
is it we are seeking ? What is the ideal of 
education in every true and worthy concep- 
tion of the mighty process? It is nothing 
more than likeness to Almighty God. God's 
likeness is hidden in the heart of man. Sin 
has defiled it; sin has obscured it; sin has 
defaced it; sin has almost erased it; but 
Jesus Christ, the great teacher and exemplar 
of all life, the exemplar of all living, has 
come to restore it, and Jesus Christ, allow 
me to say it, is at the very heart of all 
worthy movements ia the great work of 
education, whatever they may be. 

Now we come to the apprehension of the 
nature of Him who originated all things and 
who upliolds all things, and who guides and 
governs all things, and we see that the end 
and goal of tliis great process of ours is to 
bring man into the perfect likeness of God, 
so that he may be a wortliy son of the In- 
finite and Ali-holy Father. You notice 
this: if you go into a gathering of savages, 
you find what seems to be great uniformity ; 
and when y^u go down the scale of human 
life less and less does individuality manifest 
itself. All seem to be alike. When you go 
into a community of intelligent, educated, 
cultivated, refined people, nothing strikes 
you so much as the individuality of the per- 
sons whom jow meet. No two are alike. 
The very process of elevation has been the 
development of personality; and while there 
has been a development of co-operation — the 
readiness and the ability to aid each other 
and supplement each other and assist each 
other in all ways till the person stands 
there in his own substantive significance — 
nevertheless, as this process of culture 



and elevation and refinement goes on, the 
process of individualization accompanies it. 
Did you ever think of it ? This is simply 
the lifting of this mass of humanity by the 
Almighty God toward himself as the moon 
lifts the water of the sea; and so this great 
work of ours in the family, in the school, in 
the Church, in the State, in society, by all 
methods and means, this great work of ours 
that we call education is the lifting of man 
toward likeness to Him who is infinite 
and eternal, and whom we may all resemble 
in our distinct individualities. What a 
mitjhty work this becomes, and what great 
encouragement it brings to us when we un- 
derstand that this work of ours is, after all, 
God's great work through us in bringing 
many sons into glory that they may be pos- 
sessed of his likeness. There oftentimes 
comes to the obscure teacher, hidden away 
from the gaze of men in her own room, with 
a handful or a larger number of children 
about her, perplexed, worried, wearied, dis- 
tressed, tried, almost ready to give up — 
there comes sometimes in such an hour, 
in such circumstances, the encouraging 
thought, " Well, after all, I am God's mis- 
sionary, intrusted in molding these spirits 
for him. The work is slow, but it is 
God's work, and if I can have the pa- 
tience of Christ and the love of Christ and 
the quickening energy of Christ this work, 
so like drudgery as it is, becomes uplifted, 
for I am in sympathy and companionship 
with him who reached out and rescued and 
redeemed my heart." 

I remember one day passing through the 
streets of Cincinnati at an earl_y hour in the 
morning, and I saw an old, faded, and de- 
graded-looking woman in rags with a coarse 
sack over her shoulder and a little iron hook 
in her liand ; and I noticed that as she passed 
along she would examine the ash-barrels and 
the gutter, and with her little hook she 
would bring out some rag, some bit of paper, 
whatever it might be, that she could put 
into the sack upon her back ; and I stood 
and looked at her, and watched, and by 
and by I saw that she brought out a 
patch of silk. 0, how filthy and ragged 
it looked, and as she put it into the sack I 
began to think about it, and I said it requires 
no great imagination to follow this fragment 
of silk from this degraded woman's hand to 
the paper-mill ; I can see it cleansed and 
transformed and made into the most delicate 
and beautiful paper; and I can follow it in 
thought until it reaches the banker's hand 
and receives from him the signature of power 
that changes it into wealth, and it goes out 
among men transfigured as the symbol of 
affluence and of power; and T said, What 
hinders the imagination to follow this de- 
graded woman herself, and see her brought 
into the current of Christian sympathy and 
Divine love and of saving influences, seeing 



CUBIST IN AMERICAN EDUCATION. 



211 



her transformed by the chemistry of Christ's 
blood and the renewing of the Divine Spirit 
until she is hfted up and up and up, beyond 
the ranks of angels and arciiangels, until she 
is seated by the tlirone of power beside 
Jesus Christ himself? 

Now, brother, wherever you may be, 
whatever your pursuit is, you also iiave a 
commission to engage in this great work, to 



teach tlie ignorant, to strengthen the helpless, 
to encourage the disconsolate, and by your 
sympatiiy and your life do something for the 
encouragement of these great truths of 
Christ's coming to lift the world, the lowe-<c 
of it, toward holiness and happiness and God, 
until the earth shall revolve in its golden 
orbit about the throne of Him who made it 
and loved it and redeemed it. 



2. REMARKS. 



GEN". CYRUS BUSSEY, NEW OELEANS. 



On introd-ucing Dr. Newman, the Chairman, Gen. Bussey, spoke as 
follows : 



THE meetings that have been held in this 
tabernacle durmg the last four days are 
of as great importance as any that have ever 
come before the American people. Tlie sub- 
ject of education ever has and ever will oc- 
cupy the minds of all good citizens. There 
have been two civilizatimis in this country: 
one which began soon after the landing of the 
Pilgrim fathers, based upon the idea of educa- 
tion, and the other a civilization of aristocracy, 
which began in the South, based on tiie idea 
of human slavery. In the South no provision 
was made to educate the masses. The poor 
whites grevv up, like the Negro slave, without 
knowing how to read or write. It has been 
Siud that knowledge is power, and that the 
pen is mightier than the sword ; but it is a 
truth in this countrj'', to-day, that ignorance 
is more powerlul than all the knowledge that 
has come down to the American people since 
the days of Plymouth Rock. It is a fact, 
which could be established if time would 
permit, that a large number of the States of 
this Union are, to-day, politically controlled 
by ignorance, because the men in tliem liave 
the power to give the ballot, but have not the 
power to have their ballot counted ; and it is 
possible that in a few years the whole polit- 
ical power in tiiis country may pass into the 
hands of such men in consequence of the ig- 
norance which prevails over a large portion 
of the States of this Union — where had meii 
of intelligence control the vote of the igno- 
rant mas=ies. One of the highest duties of the 
ciiizen is sanitation. There is no cit}^ or vil- 
lage in T.he hmd that does not look out for the 
health of its people, by the adoption of wise 
sanitary measures to protect health. The 
great question of sanitation, as a nation, to- 
day, is to quarantine against the ignorance 
that has enthroned itself on nearly one half 



of this nation. For the past twenty-two 
years t have traveled extensively through 
and lived in Southern States, beginning at 
the time of tlie w&r and during all the dark 
days of reconstruction, and I say to you that 
I believe firmly that tliere never would have 
been a rebellion if the people of the Southern 
States had been as well informed as the people 
of the North. I believe the war grew out of 
tlie fact that a few men imposed upon the 
credulity of the people of the South as to the 
resources, ability, and power of the people of 
the North, until they accomplished that crime 
of all crimes — disloyalty to this Union and 
to this government. 

I have had an opportunity, as a business 
man, of witnessing the extensive effects 
of this ignorance upon the people who have 
attempted to rise from the terrible position 
in which they found themselves at the close 
of the war ; and when I tell you that eight 
thousand millions of money has been dugout 
of the South, in cotton, sugar, rice, grain, etc., 
during the past twenty years, j^ou would 
think that the people of that country would 
be rolling in the luxurj' of vi'^ealth. If the 
laboring [icopie had been as well informed as 
the people of Iowa, where a sehool-hou-e is 
never out of sight, they would be, to-day, in- 
dependent. But where there are riches and 
wealth there a certain class of people will 
congregate as the buzzards congregate about 
a carcass. These men, supplied with bad 
whisky and inferior goods, which they sell to 
the laboring people of the South at ruinous 
prices, absorb their earnings and keep them 
poor. To-day the South stands lowest in 
wealth and educ-ition. 

If I were to give you some of the methoiis 
by which the black mnn is kept poor, you 
would find that it costs more to be ignorant 



112 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



tlian it would to give every child a coUe.oje 
education. It was tlie practice with a certain 
class of mercliants to make out their l)ills 
dated, say 1883, and in settling with the 
ignorant Negroes to carry these figures into 
tlie money column and deduct them from the 
amount due to them. These are some of the 
methods that I know liave been borne by 
the laboring people of the South, and that are 
borne to-day. There are many honorable 
merchants in the South, and the same busi- 
ness integrity which prevails in the North, 
while many of the disreputable have come 
fcom the North, and from foreign lands, to 
take advantage of the ignorant, dependent 
laborer. 

Among the prominent public actors who 
found a place in the South at the close of the 
war or before the close of war, was the dis- 
tinguished gentleman who is to address you 
lo-day. Rev. Dr. Newman was sent to New 
Orleans in 1864, to re-estabhsh the Methodist 
pjpiscopal Church, and its educational w ork, 
ill the States of the Mississippi Valley. Un- 
der his supervision a Conference was organ- 
ized, which has been subdivided and now has 
a large representation in Texas, Louisiana, 
Mississippi, and Arkansas. He not only per- 
formed the duties of a pastor of one of the 
largest churches in the city of New Orleans, 
but he served at the same time as presiding 
elder of a large district, was the spiritual ad- 
viser of more than a score of ministers sent 
out to carry oti the work organized under 
Ins direction. He established a Church pa- 
per at his own expense, which he edited and 
distributed largely free to educate tiie people 
of his Church in the various States tributary 
to New Orleans. He built several churches, 
costing in the aggregate more than a hundred 
tliousand dollars. 



He aided largely in the esiablisliment of 
wliat is now the New Orleans TJniversity, 
and also in planting an Orphans' Home and 
an educational institution on Bayou Teche, 
Louisiana. It is safe to say that, to-day, 
more than one hundred persons are min- 
isters ol the Gospel or teachers in schools, 
whose entire education was obtained in the 
institutions organized by him. The time 
came when the Bishops of the Church 
desired a man to fill one of the first pulpits 
in the land, and Dr. Newman was se- 
lected for that position. 

Fifteen years ago I was in Chicago witii 
Dr. Newman, where we met Rev. Dr. Hart- 
zell, who has so successfully planned this 
National Education Assembly. He was then 
a young man, just out of college. I was the 
first man in New Orleans to extend a hand 
of welcome to Dr. Hartzell when he came, 
full of energy and enthusiasm, to assume his 
responsible work there. The duties of a pas- 
tor, presiding elder of a district, editor of the 
Souih-2ve-skrn Advocate, and the care of the 
New Orleans University and Orphans' Home 
were performed in a manner reflecting the 
highest credit upon him. When the yellow 
fever spread the mantle of death over that 
great city, claiming its victims by the lumdi-ed, 
both Newman and Hartzell remained at their 
posts and safely passed through the terrible 
sickness which brought them nigh unto death. 

I have detailed these events in the history 
of these two faithlul ministers, from an inti- 
mate acquaintance with their labors during 
the past seventeen years, believing that the 
work performed by them in the South has 
been of great service to the cause of the 
Chiu'ch and of education. 

I now have the pleasure of introducing 
Rev. Dr. Newman, who will address you. 



3. SERMON : RELIGIOUS EDUCATION THE SAFEGUARD OF 

THE NATION. 



BEV. JOHN P. KEWMAN, D.D., LL.D., NEW TOEK. 



I HOPE that my friend, General Busse}^ 
who has seen fit to identify my name and 
the name of Brother Hartzell with our mis- 
sionary work in the South, may be happy 
6' oup;h to find that the future of that work 
shall justify his kind words spoken here to- 
day. 

I understand that the character of this 
meeting has been somewhat changed. Ac- 
cording to the published programme it was 
to have been a platform meeting ; General 



Bussey — a gentleman competent to the task 
— was to preside, and Dr. Buttz, one of our 
first scholars, was to speak on American 
scholarship, and I was to follow with the 
subject announced. But I imderstand that 
the spiritual authority of Ocean Grove has 
decided that we are to have a sermon. So 
it is necessary for me to choose a text, which 
you will find in Proverbs xiv, 34: "Right- 
eousness exaltetli a nation." 

Under the light of these words, I am to 



CHRIST IN AMEBTGAN EDUCATION. 



213 



speak of the religious element in secular ed- 
ucation, and its saiictificatiou as a safeguard 
of tlie American republic. 

Religion is naturally divided into two 
parts, the devotional and the ethical. In 
yonder tabernacle you have had the devo- 
tional. 

We propose this afternoon to have the 
ethical; for what is the devotional without 
the ethical? Show me a perfect man, and I 
will show you a man whose morality corre- 
sponds with his devotions. We should have 
more ethical force in the heart and life of 
the Church, to give potency and glory to its 
devotion. So, to-daj'^, guided by these in- 
spired words, this formulated principle, this 
grand old truth that has come down baptized 
with the venerableness of antiquity, still 
fragrant with a plenary inspiration, and like 
its Au'hor true in the past, irue in the pres- 
ent, and to be true in the future of all na- 
tions, whether aristocratic or democratic or 
autocratic or republican or paternal, or what- 
ever the form the nation may assume, let us 
consider the weighty question assigned us. 

A nation is a community of people. What- 
ever may be its ancestiy, or its organization, 
or its jurisprudence, or its culture, a nation 
is a congregation or community of people. 
Righteousness is one of those inspired, com- 
prehensive terms which includes the devo- 
tional and the ethical, especiallj'' the ethical 
referring to private virtue and to public 
morality. Out of the private virtues issue 
the public morality, out of the public moral- 
ity issue the national preponderance and per- 
petuity and prosperity. You can therefore 
see the depth of the meaning, the profound 
significance, of this venerable proverb that 
has come from the past, " Righteousness ex- 
alteth a nation." Because it is ever true, 
and because the greatest nations ignoring its 
truth have passed awa}'', hence it is wise for 
us, on this Christian Sabbath, to oonsider the 
relations of this subject to the welfare of our 
national life. 

There is a deep significance, my brethren, 
in these words, whf^n we remember how apt 
we are to fancy that because this is a repub- 
lic, therefore it is immortal. But there have 
been other republics which have passed 
from the vision of the world. On the shores 
of Africa there was one, in whose splendid 
harbors floated the flags of all nations, whose 
merchants were princes, whose cities were 
centers of power, and who caused the mis- 
tress of the world to tremble when that 
power was in its glory. 

There was a republic by the waters of the 
JEgean Sea, a confederation of States, where 
the question^, not only of the state itself, but 
also of vassal States, were settled in the 
grave assembly of the people — a republic 
which reached the highest degree of glory in 
literanure and in art, whose poets to-daj'' sing 
for us, whose orators to-day are our models. 



whose esoteric philosophies are to-day imi- 
tated by the great thinkers. 

There was a republic on the banks of the 
Tiber, three hundred years before the Babe 
of Bethlehem was born, in whose citizen- 
ship was one hundred and twenty millions of 
people. 

Yet these republics have passed away and 
are among the things that were. For my 
own part, my brethren, I can see no hope 'or 
the future if our perpetuity depends merely 
upon our being a republic, with its free con- 
stitution, with its right of suffrage, with its 
halls of justice, with its schools of learning. 
I must look for that hope elsewhere. 1 must 
penetrate below the surface, I must grapple 
with those sterner truths that lie at tlie 
veiy base of our individualized moral exist- 
ence. 

What are the safeguards of this republic ? 

After a hundred years of national life, 
growth, and prosperity, we may infer the 
future from the past. To what should we 
ascribe the greatness and preservation of our 
country? The statesman attributes this 
grand result to the genius of our gi)veru- 
ment, our inherent power to enforce law, our 
profound respect for civil obligations. But 
historical facts are in proof that all that is wise 
in law, mighty in war, rich in commerce, 
magnificent in architecture, and splendid in 
discovery, belonged to the republics of Spar- 
ta, Venice, and Genoa. Yet their glory is 
as a tale that is told. History has furnished 
no exceptions to the rule that national safety 
inheres in national virtue, in the correctness 
of the moral sentiments of the people, in 
the rectitude of the private life of the citizen. 
In all the ages moral corruption has preceded 
political ruin. That which undermines the 
commonwealth is that which civil law is in- 
adequate to reach. It is the province of 
constitutions and of laws to restrain the evil 
and conserve the good — to protect the virtu- 
ous, but not to reform the vicious. All civil 
Uw, whether constitutional or statutory, 
lacks the power to purify. Law may dictate, 
may guide, may conserve, but it cannot re- 
form. " For what the law could not do. in 
that it was weak through the flesh, God 
sending his own Son in the likeness of sin- 
ful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the 
flesh." The power to purify does not inhere 
in the penalties of law, whether human or 
divine. There is nothing reformatory in 
punishment, else every criminal would be- 
come a virtuous citizen, ajid every lost soul 
would become a saint. Something must be 
added to suppress sin and develop virtue. 
Vice and virtue lie beyond the reach and 
scope of law. Law can reach actions, but it 
cannot reach those principles whence actions 
spring. It is a great fact that, back of con- 
stitutions, back of laws, back of administra- 
tions, there must be a moral sentiment, which 
is the energy of law and the glory of all 



314 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



human governments. Our splendid govern- 
ment, the growth of a century, the ripened 
wisdom of tlie past, the purest and most 
beneficent on all tlie earth, would fall to 
pieces like a rope of sand unsupported by 
the moral seutiment of the people, who de- 
mand that crime shall be punished and virtue 
rewarded. That moral sentiment comes from 
Christianity, accepted and practiced in every- 
day hfe. It is the product of religious edu- 
cation, the safeguard of civil liberty. 

Some statesmen assume that the govern- 
ment itself is the competeut and all-sufficient 
safeguard of our rights as citizens; that from 
it, and of necessity, will issue public justice, 
competency, and happiness, and that the 
recognized right to command and duty to 
obey are the esseniial factors of national life. 
Doubtless one form of government is better 
than another, but it is a matter of record 
that all forms of government, from the pa- 
ternal to the autocratic, have failed to secure 
the happiness of the people independent of a 
force which resides in the individual citizen. 
All history attests two great facts : that un- 
der the best civil rule known to man vice has 
prevailed, treason has iriumpiied, and the 
wf)rst men have hved; wiiile, on the other 
hand, under the worst of governments some 
men have attained the highest virtues, as the 
apostles under the Neros, the Waldenses un- 
der the Popes, the Puritans under the Stu- 
arts. 

The true statesman, sound in his political 
philosophy and strong in his religious con- 
victions, will recognize the power of individ- 
uality in the perpetuity of our free institu- 
tions. He will feel and proclaim the impera- 
tive necessity of a political conscience, which 
will respond to every voice of duty and of 
justice. In this free countrj^ each citizen 
should have a clear perception of his political 
duiies; a realization of his personal respon- 
sibility in the issues of every election ; a 
manifested interest in the moral character of 
all public officials, not unlike the interest he 
feels in the character of the minister of his 
church, the teacher of his children, the agent 
of his business. 

How to create, develop, and conserve such 
a conscience, is the great question of tlie 
hour. The scholar assumes that the end 
will be attained b}^ liigh mental culture and 
the diffusion of knowledge among the masses. 
He would exalt the intellect above the con- 
science. Doubtless an intelligent citizenship 
is of greater importance in a repubhc than 
any other form of government. An aristoc- 
racy of learning may answer the purposes 
of the governing classes under an autocracy 
or a monarchy, but in a republic tlie com- 
mon mind must be taught to think, the citi- 
zen must be educated in the principles of a 
free government, the true spliere and respon- 
sibility of the elective franchise, and to grap- 
ple with and triumph over the schemes of 



corrupt leaders. "When tlie government is by 
the people and for the people, the masses 
must be intelligent. The chief object of our 
common-school education is to train the in- 
dividual mind to tldnk. If we have soldiers 
their b lyonets should think, if we have sail- 
ors their guns should think, and if we have 
voters their ballots should think. 

The Christian patriot is in hill accord with 
the scholar in the necessity of mental culture 
for the preservation of our civil liberty, and 
to mental culture he adds a religious educa- 
tion. What is there in mere knowledge that 
can purify the heart and restrain the craving 
passions thereof? Chemistry admits us into 
the very secrets of nature, into her marvel- 
ous combinations; but can a knowledge of 
gases, of liquids, of solids, change the vicious 
into the virtuous? Who knew more of 
chemistry than Prof. Webster, who, in his 
laboratory, committed the highest crime 
know to the law ? What is there in the 
mere knowledge of the stars, of the rocks, 
of the flowers, of the winds, of the distance 
and proportion, of anatomy and physiology, 
of law and medicine, of languages living and 
dead, of the laws of trade and the science of 
statesmanship, that can change and purify 
human nature, which is depraved in principle 
and sinful in practice? It is Lord Bacon 
who said : " In knowledge without love there 
is somewhat of malignit3^" It is Coleridge 
wlio said: "All the mere products of the 
understanding tend to death." It is Paul 
who said: " Knowledge pulfeth up, but char- 
ity edifieth." Where shall we find such his- 
toiy, such poetry, such theology, as among 
the Jews, who are now exiles in eveiyland? 
Where shall we find such philosophy, such 
orator}', such art, as in the land which gave 
to the world a II( mer, a Pericles, an Aris- 
totle? Where shall we find such jurispru- 
dence, such statesmanship, such eloquence, 
as in an empire which could boast of a Caesar 
and a Tully? Yet, behold the ruins of the 
one and ihe desolation of the other! 

Listen to Lord Macaulay's description of 
the learning of the cultured people of ancient 
Greece : 

" In general intelligence the Athenian 
populace far surpassed the lower orders of 
any community that has ever existed. It 
must be considered that to be a citizen was 
to be a legislator, a soldier, a judge, one 
upon whose voice might depend the fate of 
the wealthiest tributary State, or of the 
most eminent man. The lowest offices, both 
of agriculture and of trade, were in common 
performed by States. The commonwealth 
supplied its meanest members with the sup- 
port of life, the opportunity of leisure, and 
the means of amusement. Books were, in- 
deed, few, but they were excellent, and they 
were accurately known. It is not by turning 
over libraries, but by repeatedly perivsing 
and intensely contemplating a few great 



CHRIST IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 



215 



models that the mind is best disciplined. 
Books, however, were the least part of the 
education of an Athenian citizen. Let us 
for a moment transfer ourselves in thought 
to that glorious city. Let us imagine that 
we are entering its gates in the time of its 
greatest power and glory. A crowd is 
assembled around a portico. All are gazing 
with delight at the entablature, for Phidias 
is putting up the frieze. We turn into an- 
other street. A rhapsodist is reciting there ; 
men, women, and children are thronging 
around him: the tears are running down 
their cheeks, their eyes are fi.xed, their very 
breath is still, for he is telling how Priam 
fell at the feet of Achilles, and kissed those 
hands — the terrible, the murderous — which 
had slain so many of his sons. 

"We enter t!ie pubhc place; there is a 
ring of youths all leaning forward, witli 
sparkling eyes and gestures of expectation. 
Socrates is pitted against the famous atheist 
from lona, and has just brought him to a 
contradiction in terms. 

" But we are interrupted. The herald is 
crying, ' Room for the Prytanis.' The gen- 
eral assembly is to meet. The people are 
swarming in on every side. Proclamation is 
made : ' Who wishes to speak? ' Pericles is 
mounting the stage. Then for a play of 
Sophocles, and away to sup with Aspasia. 

" I know of no modern university that has 
so excjellent a system of education." 

Need I ask scholars where Greece is to- 
day? 

Here are the marvelous saymgs of some 
frenchmen that are worthy of our consider- 
ation. Victor Cousin, the great philosopher, 
said to the Chamber of Peers : 

" Any system of school training which 
sharpens and strengthens the intellectual 
powers, without at the same time affording 
a source of restraint and countercheck to 
their tendency to evil, is a curse rather than 
a blessing." 

De Tocqueville says : " Despotism may gov- 
ern without religious faith, but liberty cannot." 

Here is Herbert Spencer. One would hard- 
ly think that he would come so far on the 
other side, and yet he utters this truth: 
"The belief in the moralizing effects of in- 
tellectual culture, flatly contradicted by facts, 
is absurd." 

And Huxley; one would hardly suppose 
that he would have uttered a word in favor 
of that good old Book: "There must be a 
moral substratum to a child's education to 
make it valuable, and there is no other 
source from which this can be obtained at all 
comparable with the Bible." 

Webster said: "In what age, by what 
sect, where, when, by whom, has religious 
education been excluded from the education 
of the youth? Nowhere 1 never! Every- 
where and at all times it has been regarded 
as essential." 



And what is the great saying of the 
Father of his Country, that obsolete states- 
man, now, in the estimation of the mush' 
room statesmen of tliis day — these political 
statesmen who know nothing beyond party 
zeal and party spoils, who never visit the 
grave of Washington to pray that liis mantle 
may come upon them ? What does Wash- 
ington say with reference to this? — "Let us 
with caution indulge the supposition that 
morality can be maintained without religion. 
Reason and experience botli forbid us to ex- 
pect that national morality can prevail in 
exclusion of religious principles." 

And then, rising above all these In glory, 
the Divine Nazareno said: "Suffer little 
children, and forbid them not, to come imto 
me ; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." 
Let me touch their young hearts; let me 
change their beautiful spirits into higher 
beauty as citizens of a national life that will 
be a conserving force not known to civil 
law, not known in science, not known in 
literature. 

There is a striking fact in connection with 
the flourish to-day for fine arts among the 
American people. I would not depreciate 
the taste of my countrymen for the marble 
or the canvas. But there are certain pro- 
fessed connoisseurs who have made millions 
of money, and cannot tell exactl_y how they 
have made them. When they say tlie fine 
arts have a place in morality, and that we 
are by them to alleviate the ills of life, it is 
time lor us to enter our voice of protest. 

Hear Ruskin, he who has a right to speak 
of art. I confess to you, my brethren, that I 
stood appalled when I read these three 
propositions : 

I. " Nations renowned for their excellence 
in the fine arts have been subdued by bar- 
barians ; instance the Lydians and Medes, 
the Athenians and Spartans, the G-reeks and 
Romans, the Romans and Goths. 

II. " The period of perfect art is the period 
of decline. At the moment when a perfect 
pictiu-e appeared in Venice, a perfect statue 
in Florence, a perfect fresco in Rome, from 
that hour forward probity, industry, and 
courage were exiled from their walls. 

III. " Art has displayed its most energetic 
manifestations in the domain of superstition, 
of falsehood, and vice. Behold Egypt, Baby- 
lonia, Greece, Italy. And art has not only 
been most active in the service of luxury 
and idolatry, but in the exaltation of cruelty. 
A peaceful, pastoral people, living in sobriety 
and innoci-nce, never decorate the shepherd's 
stafif and tlie plow-handle; but races who 
live by depredation and slaughter exquisitely i 
ornament the quiver, the spear, and the hel- ^ 
met, and have the grandest temples wherein 

are the trophies of war. Out of the cottage 
come ftiith, courage, self-sacrifice, purity, and 
piety; out of the palace come treachery, 
cruelty, cowardice, idolatry, bestiality." 



216 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



It is a trite and familiar saying that 
"knowledge is power." It is, however, a 
power for good or for evil, as it is controlled 
by a religious education which fills the mind 
with the noblest ideas of God, of personal 
responsibility, of a future state. The battle- 
field of the republic is the cradle of Ameri- 
can childhood. On one side of that cradle 
stand the infidel, bold, brazen, impious, and 
the Jesuit, cunning, greedy, ambitious; and 
on the other side stands the Christian pa- 
triot, reverent, upriglit, earnest, holding in 
his hand the Bible without note or comment. 

The great contest between the Christian 
and the intidel is whether education shall be 
secular or religious, and between the Protest- 
ant and the Papist, whether it shall be in 
the interest of Romanism or of Protestant- 
ism. The pregnant question therefore is: 
"Which of these contestants shall control the 
education of American childhood ? If the 
infidel, how appalling the prospect! He de- 
mands a purely secular education, from 
which all religious instruction shall be 
eliminated. He would have a nation of 
educated atheists. He would annihilate all 
belief in the existence of a personal God — 
respect for his character and reverence for 
his law. He would destroy the restraining 
power of that belief. 

A reverential belief in the existence of 
God is tlie siqyreme reason of virtue. Virtue 
must be under the dominion of law, and 
that law should be the expressed legislative 
will of the Creator, whose right it is to com- 
mand, and whose power is equal to execute. 
To deny his existence, or that we have a 
knowledge of his character and wiU, or that 
he has tlie power to enforce his will, is to 
banish from the mind that wholesome " fear 
which is the beginning of wisdom." The 
impression left on the young mind from a 
purely secular education is that there is no 
power in the universe to punish vice. This 
lessens the moral force of the child to resist 
evil. It creates contempt for law, order, and 
decorum. It is destructive of all restraint. 
By what power are the dangerous classes in 
New York held in check? It is the convic- 
tion that there is here somewhere a force 
adequate to maintain law and order. De- 
stroy that conviction, and New York would 
be in the hands of the mob. By what 
power would you deter our youth from 
crime? By the dread of impending evil? 
But that dread is the sole offspring of a re- 
ligious education. Modern infidelity sub- 
verts the foundntions of morals and elevates 
expediency to the dignity of law. Morality 
without God as its authoritative reason is 
but a social compact, a human stipulation, to 
be broken at will or enforced against will. 
This, in effect, is to place virtue under the do- 
minion of the passions, so that men will be 
good or bad ys their passions incline. Are we 
willing and ready to accept this alternative? 



It is a great fact that the stability of our 
government is in the moral convictions of the 
citizen. Force is necessary for the mainte- 
nance of authority. That force must be either 
moral or physical. There must be faith in 
God or trust in bayonets. Our defense is in 
Bibles, not in Gatling guns. Our standing 
army, of less than 25,000 men, in a nation 
of fifty millions of people, is a high compli- 
ment for the religious education of our citi- 
zenship, whose convictions of moral obliga- 
tions are clear, deep, and abiding. In such 
an education the citizen is taught to revere 
God as the author of civil government, who 
has "ordained the powers that be," that the 
administration of the law is to be committed 
to men who fear God and work righteous- 
ness ; that obedience to the laws of the land 
is a Christian virtue; that public morality is 
tlie sum of private morals, and that as is the 
individual, so is the nation. Such conserv- 
ing truths are taught in the Sunday-school 
10 the youth of our land. 

Standing side by side with the infidel is 
the Papist, whose assaults on civil liberty 
are the more dangerous because made in the 
name of religion. He solemnly protests 
against the secularization of education; but 
his protest is in the interest of error, super- 
stition, and spiritual slavery. 

Now, I do not misrepresent the Roman 
Catholics. Take, for instance, the sayings of 
the late Pontiff: 

" The Romish Church has the right to in- 
terfere in the disciphne of the pubhc schools, 
and in the arrangement of the studies of the 
public schools." 

" Public schools, open to all children for 
the education of the young, should be 
under the control of the Romish Church, 
and should not be subject to the civil 
power, nor made to conform to the opinions 
of the age." 

" While teaching, primarily, the knowledge 
of natural things^ the public schools must 
not be separated from the faith and power 
of the Romish Church." 

" The civil power is inferior and sub- 
ordinate to the ecclesiastical power, and, in 
litigated questions of jurisdiction, should yield 
to it." 

" The Church and State should be united." 

" The Roman Catholic religion should be 
the only religion of the state, and all other 
modes of worship should be excluded." 

March 25, 1879, Pope Leo XIII. addressed 
a letter to the Cardinal Vicar, in which he 
said ; 

That if he possessed the liberty he claims, 
he would em'ploy it to close all Protestant 
schools and places of worship in Rome. 
{London Times, April 11, 1879.) 

Cardinal Antonelli said: 

That he thought it better that the children 



CHRIST m AMERICAN- EDUCATION: 



217 



grow up in ignorance than be eduaited 
in such a system of schools as the State 
of Massachusetts supports. (Hawkins, page 
2, and John Jay, page 293.) 

Bishop Gihnan, in his Lenten address, at 
Cleveland, Ohio, March, 1873, said: 

" We solemnly charge and most positively 
require every Catholic in the diocese to sup- 
port and send his children to a Catholic 
school. If parents, either through con- 
tempt for the priest or disregard for the 
Church, or for trifling aud insufficient rea- 
sons, refuse to send their children to a 
Catholic school, then in such cases only, 
we authorize confessors to refuse tlie 
sacraments to such parents as thus despise 
the laws of the Church, and disobey the 
commands of both priest and bishop." 

In his pastoral letter. Bishop Gibbons, of 
Richmond, Va., said: 

" The education of the youth is the en- 
grossing topic of our times. It may be 
safely asserted, that the status of Catholicity 
in the United Stites is to be determined 
by the success or failure of our day- 
schools, and that the ratio of our Catholic 
population in the coming generation will 
be in mathematical proportion to the 
number and patronage of our parochial 
institutions of learning. In every parish 
of three hundred souls, witliin a distance 
of three miles, a Catholic school must be 
built. Pecuniary difficulties must not be 
dreaded or regarded. We never fail in our 
efforts to build churches, neither shall we 
fail in building schools for our youth." 

Cardinal McCloskey said: 

" Stand by the Catiiolic schools. We must 
take part in elections." 

I now give you extracts from the Catholic 
press. The Frteman^s Journal, of September 
23, 1873, said: 

"The pope, in a document set forth for 
the teaching of the whole Cliurch, and, 
tlierefore, an instruction which ever}"- Cath- 
olic must receive as infallibly true, says that 
Catliolics ' cannot, in conscience, use such 
schools r No one in a responsible position 
dares to say that this is even a question 
of doubt. It is a ruled case — a settled law 
of the Catiiolic Church. * * * Those 
godless public scliools are condemned by the 
Churcli of God, as bad in themselves ! They 
are wrong to frequent, because the Lord 
Jesus Christ, by His vicar, the pope, speak- 
ing infallibly, has forbidden to frequent them. 
* * * These godless schools are not 
simply bad because forbidden, but they 
are forbidden because bad in themselves and in 
the use of them. * * * There is no priest 
in America — there is no prelate in America, 
nor in the world, that has the faculty of 
permitting a Catholic parent to send one 
of his children to a school from which 



the control of the ' teaching Church ' — 
llie reverend clergy — are excluded, so that 
they cannot enter such schools, and ex- 
amine both pupils and teachers as to their 
faith." 

" Let tiie public-school system go where it 
came from — the devil. What we Rom;iu 
Catholics must do now is to get our chil- 
dren out of the devonring fire. At any 
cost aud any sacrifice we must deliver the 
children over whom we have control from 
these pits of destruction, which lie invit- 
ing in tlieir way, under the name of public 
or district schools." 

" This subject (of the public scliools) con- 
tains in it the whole question of the progress 
and triumphs of the Catholic Churcli in 
the next generation of this country. Cath- 
olics, let us all act together ! Let us all read 
and listen to the same senlimeuts that 
we may know how to act together!' 

" This country has no other hope, politic- 
ally or morally, except in the vast and con- 
trolling extension of the Roman Catholic 
religion." 

From the Western (Chicago) Tablet I take 
the following: 

" If your son or daughter is attending a 
State school, you may be as certain that you 
are violating your duty as a Catholic parent, 
and conducing to the everlasting anguish and 
deep despair of your child, as if yon could 
take your oath to it ! Take him away. Let 
liim, rather, never know how to write his 
name, than become the bond and chained 
slave of Satan — than to rise up at the last 
dread day of account to curse you in all 
the unavailing repentance and bitterness 
of final despair. Take him away, if j'ou do 
not want your bed of death to be tormented 
with the specter of a soul wliich God has 
given you as a sacred trust surrendered to 
the great enemy of mankind! Take him 
away, rather than incur the anger of his God, 
and the loss of his soul 1" 

From tlie Freeman's Journal again : 
"Certainly it seems to us as if the devil 
were let loose upon tiie godless scliools to 
render them abhorrent to even pagHU nat- 
ure!" Again: "Out of every one iumdred 
Catiiolic children that are educated in the 
public schools of the United States, the 
reviewer may set down ninety-eight as a 
clear and certain gain to the devil." 

Again I quote from the Tablet : 

" If the Tablet declared sometime ago that 
it was better for a child to run in the streets, 
in which occupation he became a thief, but 
stood at least some chance of saving his soul, 
than attend a godless school whose teaching 
resulted in making him a rogue and an un- 
believer, we see no reason to withdraw from 
such a sentence." 



218 



GHRI8TIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



These theories are directly opposed to 
every right understanding of the American 
idea of education. I will quote from two 
of America's illustrious sons. Webster said : 

" The power over education is one of the 
powers of public police, belonging essentially 
to the government. It is one of the powers, 
the exercise of which is indispensable to the 
preservation of society, with integrity and 
healthy action ; it is the duty of self-preser- 
vation." 

At Burlington, Iowa, on November 4, 
1879, Gen. Grant said to i.he children: 

"I believe that if there ever is another 
war in this country it will be one of igno- 
rance versus intelligence, and in tliat conflict 
the State of Iowa will achieve a great victory. 
Furthermore, I think that war will be one of 
ignorance and superstition combined against 
education and intelligence, and I am satisfied 
that the children here will enroll in the army 
of intelligence, and wipe out the common en- 
emy — ignorance." 

I accord to them the right to have parochial 
schools, as we Methodists have our denomi- 
national schools. The only point is this: As 
T would not take a dollar from the State for 
the Methodist schools, so the Catholics shall 
not have a dollar for their parochial schools. 

But let US see wh.at has been the fruit of 
these parochial schools in other lands. Let 
us, for instance, turn our attention to 
Spain. Spain, that had fifteen governments in 
eiglity-seven years 1 Spain, always under the 
control of the Holy Father 1 Three hundred 
years ago she had the lead of all other 
nations. She had the advantage of the 
Roman and the Saracenic civilizations. She 
had the glory of a new world. But all 
is lost. Of her fifteen millions, twelve mill- 
ions do not know their letters, and only two 
millions can write their names ! There was 
an election held in Medonia, where there 
were five hundred votes cast, and the 
ministerial candidate was declared elected 
by five thousand majority! 

Take France — France, the beautiful; 
France, where the marble speaks and the 
canvas glows ! Rome has had her parochial 
schools there. In 1869, among thirty-six 
millions of people only one-half of them 
could read and write. Out of 444,000 crimi- 
nals, 442,000 were illiterate. Eight hundred 
French communities were totally without 
schools. There were 444,000 criminals, and 
1,600,000 paupers. Out of 900,000 births, 
74,000 were illegitimate. There were 4,500 
suicides. {See Mamfield On the Relations of 
Crime and Illiteracy.) But now the record is 
turned, and there are in school 4,500,000 
children. There are 72,000 schools of all 
kinds; 111,000 teachers— half of them fe- 
males. The total number of pupils of all 
ages is 4,717,000, equally divided between 
the sexes. Of these, 3,878,151, from six to 



thirteen, are in school. In December and 
January the attendance was nineL}' per cent, 
of the enrollment. In Paris there were 
210,000 of school age, 170,000 of whom were 
in school. 

Let us now review the record of Italy, the 
home of the Popes. There the supreme pontiff 
held sway for more than a thousand years, 
persecuting such men as Dante, Galileo, 
Columbus, and Cavour. As a result of this 
system, only 32 out of every 100 men, and 
only 19 out of every 100 women, could read 
and write, and out of 83,000 soldiers born in 
1848, only 3,000 could read and write. But 
behold Italy now : 54,000 schools and two 
and a half millions of scholars, supported at 
$5,000,000 a year in outlay by the govern- 
ment. 

In Austria the concordat was abolished in 
1870. They now report 2,600,000 school 
children, with 1,691,349 of them in school. 
Education is compulsory, and their course 
comprehensive. They expend upon their 
schools $8,000,000 a year. 

Ireland, dear old Ireland ! The best coun- 
try on the globe from which to emigrate! 
Here is the home of so many American citi- 
zens! The British census of 1871 shows 
that in County Connaught, where Romanism 
dominates, 51 per cent, of the Catholics were 
illiterate, while of the Protestants only 11 
per cent, were illiterate. The criminals 
were in the ratio of six Catholics to one 
Protestant. 

Mexico has had 56 revolutions in 60 years. 
With nine millions of people she supports 
only 8,000 schools — one to each 1.141 in- 
habitants. The attendance is 349,000, or 
less than one- fifth of all the children between 
six and thirteen. Her expenditure yearly is 
$1,632,436. 

Underlying all his houses of mercy, schools 
of learning, temples of worship, is the love 
of conquest. His is a dream of the political 
subjugation of all nations to imperial individ- 
ualism. His bold pretension is, " that, while 
the State has rights, she has them only in 
virtue and by permission of a superior 
authority; and that authority can only bo 
expressed through the Church. This ex- 
traordinary assertion is based on the pope's 
vicegerent's claim to dictate all human af- 
fairs, to define the faith and morals of all 
men, and to change the form of civil govern- 
ment and disgrace rulers at will. The pon- 
tiff condemns free speech, a free press, a free 
literature, the study of the sciences independ- 
ent of priestly dictation ; all marriages not 
sacramentally confirmed — a free school, a 
free church, a free conscience; and claims 
for the Church the authority to define its own 
civil rights and the privilege to apply military 
force to spcure the same. 

To counterwork the impiety of infidel ed- 
ucation and the political designs of the pa- 
pist the Christian patriot offers to his couu- 



CHRIST IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 



219 



try tlie Sunday-school. This is the great 
source of that moral power which will render 
secular learning beneficent alike to its pos- 
sessor and to the nation at large. It is the 
appropriate supplement to our public schools. 
As a Christian people we may and should 
insist that tlie Bil)lc shall be read in our 
common scliools. as it is the great source of 
all true moral philosopbj'' ; yet the selections 
read and the manner of reading are left to 
the taste and spirit of the teacher, and may 
be a formality or a power. But it cannot be 
taught, expounded, or enforced. This is the 
office and work of the Sunday-school teacher, 
who can illustrate its precepts, unfold its 
promises, and enlarge upon its awful threat- 
enlngs till the young mind is imbued with its 
spirit, and the youthful heart is brought un- 
der its divine influence. The time may 
come when majorities may vote the Bible 
from our public schools, and the teachings 
therein be altogether secular. But the 
morals of the children will be safe if tlieyare 
trained for the Lord in the Sabbath-school, 
and the nation will be safe from those moral 
evils which issue in national ruin, when the 
childhood of its citizenship is reared in the 
nurture and admonition of the Lord. 

And the Sunday-school also supplements 
the instructions of home. In this intense 



life of ours but few parents give sufficient 
time to fiimily devotion. Home is the school 
of childhood for weal or for woe. There we 
are taught to think, to feel, to speak, and to 
act: there our characters receive their lir.«t 
impressions; tliere the die of the future isi 
often cast. Throughout eternity we will 
have cause to thank (iod for Chi-istian homes 
— their hallowed associations and blessed 
memories. Yet, even such homes are 
strengthened and beautified by the lessons, 
the examples, and godly influences of the 
Sunday-school. Blessed be the man whom 
the Lord raised up to be the founder of 
this institution of immeasurable power. It 
is the nursery of the Church, the fountain 
of the ministry, the hope of the republic. 
If Columbus discovered a new world for 
our republic, and Watt invented the steam- 
engine which to-daj^ strides all conti- 
nents, and Morse produced the telegrapii 
winch has transformed the earth into a 
neighborhood, and Gutenburg gave to man- 
kind the art of printing which has made 
the Bible a universal book — to Robert 
Raikes belongs the honor of the organi- 
zation of the Sunday-school, which has 
peopled this continent with Christians wlio 
are the promise that our nation shall endure 
forever. 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN OUR NA- 
TIONAL LIFE. 



GEN". T. J. MORGAN", 

Principal State Normal School, Potsdam, N. T. 



AS I passed along the beach to-night I 
noticed a large number of people — sev- 
eral hundred, I should think — standing in 
groups of two, or five, or ten, or twenty, 
some with glasses in their hands, some 
shading their eyes, all looking eagerly for- 
ward and asking " What is it ? Is it a man ?" 
And as their eyes looked out to the sea they 
saw that which seemed like the face of a 
man, now appearing, then disappearing. 
How many of your hearts were stirred to- 
night as that question went along the shore, 
"Who is it?" With what eager interest 
■would you listen to me now if I could tell 
you that it was a man, that he Avas lost; if 
I should tell j'ou his name, and his history ! 
I am glad to tell j'oti that it was not a hu- 
man being that was in peril ; but your inter- 
est was awakened because there was even 
a possibility that it was a human being. If 
you are so interested in one man, or one 
supposed man, in peril, what would be j^our 
interest if you stood with me to-night amid 



the ruins of Rome, casting your eye over the 
Campagna, looking at the Colosseum lifting 
its head to the heavens, into which the mul- 
titudes that would dwarf this vast audience 
went to look upon those bloody scenes 
enacted there? If you stood within the 
ruins of the Forum, if you went with mo 
into those little temples, with what interest 
would you listen as I sketched for you that 
people's character, as 1 told you their his- 
tory, as I told you of their great works of 
art. How gladly would 3'ou listen if I told 
you why that nation sank to do its work no 
more I 

A great orator once said that lie supposed 
that the sailor-boy, swinging in his ham- 
mock on the sea in the night-time, as he 
thought of the great depth of water beneath 
him, of that sea reaching out beyond him 
for thousands of miles, of that infinite heaven 
that extended way beyond the reach of the 
imagination over him, there would come to 
his soul the thought of sublimity. As I 



220 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



liave for the last four da5^s been sittino; on 
this pla'form listening to men discussing the 
great questions that liave occupied our 
thoughts here, as tliey liave talked of edu- 
cation, of Christianity, of the growth of this 
jjeople, of the perils that confront us, of the 
possibilities that stretch out before us, as 
they have tall<ed of the Negro and the In- 
dian, as they have sketched for us the vast 
Territory of Alaska with its people, as they 
have pictured what is possible for us as a 
nation, I have felt that the greatness, the 
grandeur, the power, the dignity, of this peo- 
ple of ours far surpasses any tliought of 
mere material greatness that may come to 
the sleeping sailor swinging in liis hammock. 

There remains in this list of topics to be 
discussed one which it is my privilege now 
for a little time to outline before you, and 
that is " Christian education as a factor in 
our national life." I say Christian educa- 
tion ; I do not like to separate the terms 
Christianity and education. We sometimes 
hear " Christianity and culture," " Chris- 
tianity and education" — but I like to think of 
them as combined, one incomplete without 
the other. We mwy as a matter of thought 
separate them; we may think of the one as 
apart from the other ; lout I like to think of 
them as standing together in intimate and 
inseparable relationship. When they laid 
the foundation for that bridge between New 
York and Brooklyn they went deep in the 
earth on the Brooklyn side, and they laid 
broad the foundations of that pier. Slowly 
it came out of the water until it had gained 
the requisite height and the requisite 
strength ; and on the other side of the river 
tiiey laid the foundation for the other pier 
until it had reached a heiglit corresponding 
to the other ; then wires were stretched 
across. Then the great bridge became a 
fact, and thousands cross it from side to side, 
and millions of men and women will cross 
it through the centuries to come; and we 
think, not of the Brooklyn pier, nor of the 
New York pier, but of the great bridge that 
spans them both. So I like to think of 
Christianity and education, and of Christian 
culture that binds them inseparably together. 

What, then, is Christian education? It is 
education based upon Christ; it is an educa- 
tion tliat regards Christ as tlie maker of tlie 
universe, an education that regards science 
simply as a study of those laws according to 
wliich Christ has made the universe. Every 
flower in that bouquet that stands before me 
to-night was thought out by Christ before 
the world was. The stars in their courses 
do but obey the laws of Christ. Science, in 
all its forms, is but the formulation of the 
laws of Christ's universe; mathematics is 
but a statement of his laws. Christian edu- 
cation is an education that takes Christ as 
its starting-point, Christ as its goal, an edu- 
cation that regards every man a brother, 



that seeks to strike down all caste and dis- 
tinction of classes, that respects the rights 
of man as man ; an education that seeks for 
men and women the highest possible devel- 
opment, so that they maj'- become and may 
achieve all that God intended that they 
should achieve ; an education that is Christian 
in its principles. Christian in its origin, ac- 
cepting the Bible as the only infallible rev- 
elation of destiny. 

Now what place has that education as a 
factor in national life ? I can perhaps best 
bring that before you by the statement of a 
few propositions. First. The nation is a 
personality. We too often think of the na- 
tion as a congregation of people. We say 
we mimber filty millions; but I like to think 
of the nation, not simply as a congregation 
of people, but as a moral power. You 
would not be contented if I said to you that 
the sea is simply a collection of drops. The 
drops are there, but they take on something 
of the majesty of tiie ocean of which they 
become a part. The drops are all alike, but 
the ocean takes on its own individuality ; 
it has its currents and its counter-currents ; 
it has its storms : there float upon it the 
navies of the world; there is borne upon it 
the commerce of one nation to another. So 
I like to think of the nation not simply as a 
gathering together of men and women ; it is 
more than the record of the census ; it is a 
great and mighty person. And the nation 
has its great moral problems. We are not 
here simply to till the soil, and to explore the 
mines, and to level the forests, and to build 
houses, and to carry on commerce, and to 
carry out wars; we are here for the settle- 
ment of great moral questions, and God will 
hold us responsible as a people for the solu- 
tion that we give to them. We are to ask 
until these questions are settled, Wliat shall 
we do with immigration? What shall we do 
witli the Indian? What shall we do with 
illiteracy? What shall we do with the 
Mormon question ? What with pauperism ? 
What shall we do with all those great ques- 
tions? We must answer tliem as men, as 
men that are responsible to God for the 
manner in which they answer them, and the 
future of this nation will be determined by 
the answer that is given. 

Down yonder on the beach, stranded, 
there lies to-night a ship, sound, stanch, 
sea-worthy ; but she sails not. The hold is 
empty; the sails are furled; the crew is 
gone; the captain sits in his little cabin 
looking out upon the sea as the vessels go 
by, longing for the daj"- when the tide shall 
lift him once again upon the highway of the 
sea. Long and wquvj hours does he spend, 
lamenting doubtless that when the air was 
black and the sky was full of snow he did 
not turn his vessel out into the sea that it 
might not strand upon the beach. There are 
nations to-day lying idly, taking no part in 



CHRIST IN AMERICAN EDUCATION. 



221 



the ^reat work of Immanity. In the Na- 
tional Gallery of Englaiid, in London, one of 
the great master paintings tiiat is there, 
painted by Turner, whom Rnsl<in delights to 
lionor, is a picture of a great sliip of war, 
a ship tliat had iDorne a proud record in the 
English navy; but her days are numbered, 
her warfare is over, tliere is no longer any 
place for her in the modern navy of that 
proud nation, and. as the artist conceives of 
her, siie is being towed away from the fleets 
back to the stoclvS that she may be disman- 
tled and destroyed. So I have no doubt that 
we would like, when tlie record is written 
for this nation, that it may be the record ot 
the old sliip Tcmerai7-e, whose work w.-is 
ended and wliose career was closed. We 
hope that we shall not see this grand nation 
for centuries to come stopping in its proud 
career. 

"Thou, too, sail on, ship of State! 
Sail on, Union, strong and great 1 
Humanity with all its fears, 
Witli all the hopes of future years. 
Is hanging breathless on thy fate." 

Second. That personality, that national 
life, that character that shall constitute us 
what we are to be, is determined by moral 
forces working from within and not by phys- 
ical forces working from witliout. Taine 
eaj's that we maj^ know what of necessity 
must be produced by nations if we know the 
surroundings, just as a man ascending a 
mountain, if he knows the temperature and 
heiglit, may kiiow the tropical flowers or the 
stunted oak he sliall meet, and at last find 
nothing but sterile barrenness. We are 
wliat we are, not because of the soil, of the 
climate, of the surroundings, but of the 
moral forces that are working from within ; 
though undoubtedly we are influenced by 
the sea and by the mountain. As we look 
back over the history of nations we find that 
people living side by side have not borne the 
same character. We have in epitome here 
at Ocean Grove an ilhistration of what I 
mean. There gi>es out from this one center 
as from a heart tliat pulsates through all this 
village a call to praj'er and to tlie worship 
of God. Tell me that it is the pr'iduct of 
tiie sea. Nay I Nay ! It is the product of 
great brains and great hearts workuig under 
God and for God. Do you say that the Jews 
were what they were liecause of the mount- 
ains of Palestine and tlie great Mediter- 
ranean? Nay, because of the great brains 
that planned and worked for tliem. Thej'^ 
became wliat they were because of Abraham, 
because of the wide-reaching plans of Sam- 
uel, because of the songs of David, of the 
sublime poetry of Isaiah, and of the prophe- 
cies of her divine prophets. Greece became 
a land of culture because of the influence of 
Plato, and Homer, and Aristotle, and De- 
mosthenes, and other great moral forces that 



wrought so grandly for that mighty people. 
And we are to become what we are to be, 
not because of the vastuess of our territory, 
but because of the moral forces that are 
brought to bear in shaping and molding, in 
directing and controlling, the development of 
our national life. 

Third. The great agency for the develop- 
ment of national character is education. I 
use the term education in its broadest sense ; 
I include in it every thing that iielps to make 
man change his condition and direct his en- 
ergies, so that 3''ou can mark tlie difference 
between a savage and a civilized man ; and 
this education, this development, whether 
brought about by the family, tiie church, tlie 
school, or the college, is the great force that 
makes men di£fei-ent, that makes nations dif- 
ferent, and, as Taine said, that if we knew the 
natural surroundings we could tell the char- 
acter of a people — I say that if we knew tlie 
moral forces at work, the prevalent ideas, the 
hopes and the fears in the licarts of men, 
tliat we could tell the character that the 
nation will bear, liducation does for men 
four things: it imparts instruction ; it evolves 
power: it implants principles; it develops 
character. The instruction given to men 
may be the instruction of the parent, teacher, 
or preacher; it may be knowledge in refer- 
ence to science or history or piiilosophy, or 
facts that are lianded down and communi- 
cated from one to another. The evolution 
of power is the calling into action all the 
latent forces of man. The implanting of 
principles is putting within the hearts all 
those motives, those considerations that con- 
trol tlie actions in all circumstances and on 
all occasions; and the development of char- 
acter is the unfolding of justice, of right, of 
truth, of honor, of manliness, and of what- 
ever else tliere is best and deepest in the 
man; or there is the stifling of the good and 
the unfolding of tlie evil. Now, under this 
comproliensive definition of education, I say 
that edueaiion has the power to make a na- 
tion that which it is to become. If you lay 
your hand upon the child in its infancj^ and 
trniu it, you can make it well nigh what 3'"0u 
will. The mass of cliildren in the country 
are to determine the chai'acter that this 
mightj' people shall bear a generation lience. 
Men understand this when, instead of try- 
ing to exterminate the Indians, they gather 
them in the school-house and hiy before 
them tlie gi'eat ideals of moral excellence of 
civilized life, and so mold from within the 
character of that people. 

Fourth. No education is complete which 
is not Christian. That education that, seeks 
to train simply the body, falls far short of 
doing for the man that wliich ought to be 
done. What have you done for the man 
when you have trained his body? You hnve 
made him simply a splendid animal, and for 
what purpose ? Ask those two men that 



223 



CHRrSTIAir EDU0AT0R8 IN COUNCIL. 



stood the other night, to the disgrace of our 
civilization be it said, and to the shame of 
New York be it uttered — those two men 
that stood the other night protected by the 
police of that city, encouraged by the pres- 
ence of legislators and of judges. They had 
been trained in their physical natures, and 
for what? For what I That they might in 
the presence of that great throng of men 
pound each other to pieces. A man that is 
trained simply as to his physical nature has 
not developed that which is grandest and 
best witliin him. I like to think of this 
body as I think of a scaffolding of a mighty 
building, only of value until the building it- 
self is completed. I like to think of this 
body as I do of this tabernacle where we 
ai'e to-night ; the artist has done his work ; 
he has made it attractive for you, these col- 
umns, tliese arches, this wide-reaching roof, 
these seats ; all tliese surroundings have 
made it an, attractive place. Do you come to 
enjoy those seats ? Do you come simply to 
take put in the physical enjoyment that 
comes from this shelter? No! It is that 
you may listen to the truth that comes from 
the word of God, that you may unite your 
hearts and your voices in hymns of praise to 
him, and when the sermon has been uttered, 
when the speech has been delivered, when 
the song has been sung, \ihen the prayer 
lias ascended, when thedoxolo.Liyhas rung out 
and the benediction been given, j^ou cease to 
care, except as a precious memory, for this 
tabernacle. So I say that that education 
that trains the mind or the body alone is de- 
fective. Knowledge, if it is understood 
properly, ends in Christ. You look on that 
sea stretching far away for thousands of 
miles, and a cliild might say it is illimitable. 
Ask that sailor : he will tell you that he has 
crossed its bosom and found cities on the 
other side, that on every side it is bounded 
by the land. So the knowledge that comes 
to us of chemistrj^ of botanj^, of physiology, 
and astronomy is bounded on all sides by the 
knowledge of God. Tl;e study of any 
branch of knowledge is incomplete that does 
not lead the learner to a knowledge of God. 
Christ said " I am the truth." I have said 
that education is an evolving of power. 
That which is deepest and most Godlike in 
man is not the intellect or the reason or the 
imagination or the memory, but it is that 
power by which he lays hold on God. Man 
is a spiritual being, and a spirit b.y which he 
loves, by which he exercises faith and hope, 
that brings him into communication with his 
Maker, that which fits hira for fellowship 
with the saints, — that is the grandest thing 
in him, and any education that fails to reach 
that, any education that fails to evolve that 
power, fails of its great "work. 

I have said that education was the im- 
planting of principles, but there are no prin- 
ciples of action that will stand the test of 



life except the principles that come from the 
word of God. The golden rule, the great 
law of self-abnegation, the chief law of love, 
regard for the immutable justice and trutli 
unshakable as the foundations of God's 
throne, — these are the guiding principles 
that alone can direct you or a nation on the 
safe journey of life. 

I have said that education is the develop- 
ment of character. The one great model of 
human character was Jesus Christ, the man- 
liest of men. The one that more nearly 
meets our ideal was Christ; and the ideal of 
human character to-day is not the soldier, 
nor the philosopher; it is not the statesman, 
it is not the man of great wealth, but it is 
the Christian man and the Christian woman. 
These are the ideals of human character, 
and men maj^ talk as they will of the glo- 
ries of Shakespeare, or the grandeiu-s of 
Alexander, of the magnificence of the great 
orators ; but that which is greatest, that 
which is grandest, that which is most glori- 
ous, that which alone redeems man in his 
individual capacitj^, or as a nation, is the de- 
velopment within of the power of God and 
the likeness of Jesus Christ. 

And now, lastly. I have said that the na- 
tion is a moral personality; I have said that 
this personality is determined by moral 
forces ; 1 have said that the great moral 
force is education; I have shown yon that 
tlie onl}^ complete education is a CI ristian 
education; and now 1 say, as we look upon 
the problem, what shall be our institutions, 
what shall our people be, that just in pro- 
portion as Clirisfan education becomes a 
ruling factor in our national life, just in that 
proportion will our life become ricli and deep 
and broad and glorious and permanent. Tlie 
nation lives for the sake of its people ; we 
are not here at all for the sake of the wealiii 
that we can make, of the railroads we may 
build, of the ships we may set afloat; we 
are here for the sake of the men and women 
that may be grown here. A man from the 
fenile prairies of the West, when visiting a 
friend in New England, looking out upon tlie 
roeks and stony field before him, said '^My 
friend, what do j^ou grow here?" ""Well," 
he replied, "we grow men." And in the 
future that man that comes to study the rec- 
ords of this people, that we call American, 
if he be a thoughtful man, will not ask so 
mucli for the great bridge or the network 
of railroads, or the princely palaces, or the 
records of our commerce, as he will ask for 
the character of the men, and the character 
of the women, and the character of the 
families, and the character of the institu- 
tions that you and I have left behind us : he 
will not ask so much with reference to the 
battle of Gettysburg or of N^ishville, as he 
will ask, " What became of those m llions that 
were freed by the pen of Lincoln?" 

Our national life will be rich and glorious 



CHRIST IN AMERICAN EDUCATION. 



22g 



in the future and will satisfy the inquisitive 
student of history just in proponion as 
Christian education has laid its hand upon the 
nation, and has fashioned and molded and con- 
trolled the development of the individual, 
and the family, and the State, and the nation. 

I have been thinking, as I draw to the 
close of what few things I have said, of the 
dignity that attaches to every one of you, 
whether man or woman, that takes part in 
this great work, whether it be in expound- 
ing the word of G-od from the pulpit, or 
teaching in some obscure school in the 
South, or gathering about you some of the 
dark faces in Alaska, or instructing the little 
child that comes to you. 0, the dignity that 
attaches to helping to shape even one mind 
that shall fit it to take its place in this great 
nation of ours. 

One illustration, and then I am done. Cent- 
uries ago, men, guided by the thought of 



great architects, planned for a mighty build- 
ing ; the}^ laid broad and deep the founda- 
tions. Slowly as the years went by the.se 
walls rose to their places, but centuries 
passed away; governments were orcrturned; 
dynasties, generations, passed away; but again 
and again tliey returned to the work, and the 
mighty pile went on until, as I stood in tlie 
presence of it, I saw them laying the capstone, 
and that miglity Caihedral of Cologne stands 
as one of the marvels of the ages. Wouldyou 
not like to have painted one of those windows? 
Would you not like to have laid that crown- 
ing stone on that tower? No, I tell you that 
if you have trained one child aright, if you 
have educated one boy or one girl aright, 
you have helped in the building of this 
mighty nation that shall become grander in 
its thought, grander in its results, more 
glorious in its records, than the records of a 
thousand cathedrals such as that. 



5. THE BALLOT AND THE BIBLE. 



BY EEV. J. M. WALDEN, LL.D., CINCINNATI, OHIO. 



OUR republican institutions are what they 
have been made through the ballot ; 
their character in the future will be molded 
and their destiny determined by the ballot. 
Our nation has been, and still is, controlled 
by Christian principles, because the voter 
has been under the influence of the Bible; 
the domination of Christian principles in our 
national and State affairs will continue so 
long as the voter is influenced by the Bible, 
and to the extent of that influence. The 
obvious and possible relation of the Bible to 
the ballot, through the voter, furnishes a 
theme in harmony with the purpose and 
spirit of this assembly. Educational and 
cognate questions have been disoussed 
chiefly in their relation to the problem of 
self-government — or, more prop 'rly, in their 
relation to the voter, who is at once the 
sovereign and a subject in our republic. I 
siiall speak of the ballot and the Bible, be- 
cause the ballot is the means by which the 
voter, educated or non-educated, of virtuous 
or vicious life, works his will into govern- 
ment, and because the Bible has been, and 
must continue to be, the most potent among 
ihe agencies by which the voter is prepared 
for his higliest duly as an American citizen. 

And first I name several facts tiiat well 
may be borne in mind in every discussion of 
the ballot in its relation to our political 
system : 

1. The ballot is in the hands of a compara- 
tively small proportion of our population, 
namely, the male citizens over twenty-one 



years of age. Tn the thirty-eight States 
tliere were, accordiug to the census of 1880, 
including all nationalities, only 12,571,437 
males of voting age — about one fourth of the 
entire population of these States — and, from 
this number, must be deducted foreigners 
who have not been naturalized, and Chinese 
and Indians who are not enfranchised. 

"While our public schemes of education 
provide for our girls the same means of im- 
provement as for our boys, the que'^tioa 
naturally comes up betimes, Why is the bal- 
lot confined to less than one half of those 
who are trained in public schools at public 
expense? a question tiiat may demand more 
thought in the near future than it now re- 
ceives. 

2. Four races meet on our soil — live under 
our flag — each of which has its place in the 
problem of self-government, though all, as 
yet, have not the ballot. I mention them in 
the order of their coming, namely, the In- 
dians, the Whites, the Negroes, and the 
Asiatics. You have discussed educational 
and civil queytions in relation to three of 
these races — the White, the Negro, and the 
Indian. The Chinese question has elements 
of interest that entitle it to careful consider- 
ation. In 1880 there were 105,465 Chinese 
in our country, or 39,058 more than the 
number of Indians reported in the national 
census, and about equal to one half the 
entire Indian population, including nomadic 
tribes not enumerated in the census. It is 
not my purpose to say more now in regard 



224 



CHBISTIAN EDUGATOBS IN COUNCIL. 



to the Asiatic population, save tliat, tlaeir 
citizenship being a possibility, they constitute 
a factor in the race problem before us that 
schoolmen and other patriots will soon be 
compelled to consider. 

3. Of the 12,571,437 males of voting age 
in 1880, 64.75 per cent. (8,129,877) were 
native whites; 23.75 per cent. (2,984,309) 
were foreign-born whites; and 11.50 per 
cent. (1,457,251) were colored, including 
Indians and Chinese, perhaps one hundred 
thousand in number. Excluding foreigners 
not naturalized and natives not enfranchised, 
there were about 12,000,000 voters, two thirds 
of them native whites, about one fifth of 
them foreign whites, and about one eighth of 
tliem colored. 

4. Of the native and foreign white voters 
one tenth (1,134,300) cannot read and one 
eighth (1,418,000) cannot write; of the 
colored voters from sixty to seventy-fiue per 
cent, cannot read or write, malting in all 
above tivo million legal voters who cannot 
read or write. 

5. The body of voters is affected by the 
annual accession of young men who reach 
the voting age and of foreigners who are 
naturalized, and also by annual diminution 
through those who fall from the ranks by 
deatii. In all civil and social movements 
that may be retarded by ignorance and 
prejudice death is a factor of reform, for its 
eifects may hasten success. Through 
these changes, before the century closes, 
the field-hands of tiie South, who cannot 
read their ballots, may be succeeded by 
those who are beginning to have access to 
schools and other means of mental and 
moral growth; and in everj^ State the illit- 
erate father may be succeeded by sons 
trained in our public schools. 

6. A fraction more than one half of the 
male population has reached the voting age, 
hence tiiere are twelve million boys, ranging 
from infancy to the verge of manhood, from 
whom the ranks of voters are annually re- 
cruited. Their character, when they reach 
manhood and become voters, depends upon 
what tliey are made during their school age. 
The character of those who are the voters 
of to-day may not be changed; but the 
character of these boys, who are the heirs- 
apparent to the crown of American citizen- 
ship, the voters of to-morrow, depends upon 
the mental and moral training which they 
receive in the homes and schools of to-daJ^ 

This brings us face to face with the dutj'' 
of the States and of the nation in regard to 
the education of these candidates for the bal- 
lot. It is not my purpose to discuss this 
duty at length, at this late hour of the 
evening, but to submit some points which 
will aid in determining iis character, scope, 
and importance. 

1. As every boy, whether colored or white, 
born on our soil or brought under our flag 



by the tide of immigration, is to reach the 
ballot when he attains to his majority, every 
boy should receive such measure of educa- 
tion as, properly used, will enable him to 
readily acquire an intelhgent view of all pub- 
lic questions which come before the voters 
for their verdict at the polls. One conclusion 
from this self-evident statement is that 
schools for the instruction of these youth 
should be provided at public expense, and 
that their education cannot be safely left to 
either the wish or the convenience of the 
parent; in short, if attendance at schools be 
not voluntary, it must be secured by com- 
pulsory means. 

2. The fathers of the republic recognized 
the interest of the nation in education, and 
indicated that they regarded it a subject for 
governmental action, by their measures to 
endow our educational system. Mark, that 
three )'ears before the national Constitution 
was adopted, (1785,) the Congress of the 
colonies set apart one section of land in 
each township in the North-west Territory to 
support schools ; and two years later (1787) 
it made large grants for university educa- 
tion. Behold the spectacle — the smoke had 
scarcely cleared away from the battle-fields 
of the Eevolutiou when these grants were 
made ; questions growing out of the pro- 
tracted but successful war were pending; 
the grave problem of a permanent form of 
government was unsettled; but, in the midst 
of all the engrossing subjects claiming their 
thought, the fathers, with their characteristic 
patriotism and a keen prescience of the 
future, laid aside colonial jealousies and 
planned for the welfare of the inchoate 
States and the unborn generations tliat 
should people them, embalming their con- 
victions and purposes in the Ordinance of 
1787 — a state paper second only to the 
Declaration of Independence — a civil cov- 
enant that consecrated to freedom a territory 
containing 244,550 square miles, or two 
fifths of the entire domain of the new re- 
public, and declared the interest and duty of 
the government m the immortal provision : 

" Religion, morality, and knowledge being 
necessary to good government and the hap- 
piness of mankind, schools and the means of 
education shall forever be encouraged." — 
Art. 3. 

3. The authority of the general govern- 
ment to make direct appropriations to aid the 
States in the endowment of an educational 
system can hardly be questioned in view of 
what has already been done. Study the 
magnitude of tlie land grants in this behalf: 

To common schools 67,893,919 acres. 

To universities 1,165,520 " 

To agricultural and mechan- 
ical colleges 9,600,000 " 

Total 78,659,439 acres. 



CHRIST IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 



325 



This equals 122,905 square miles; nearly 
double the area of the New England States, 
(tj2.005 square miles;) larger tlian New 
England, New York, and New Jersej"-, (1 17,- 
1180 square miles;) larger than Virginia, 
North and South Carolina, (118,875 square 
miles;) one fifth as large as all the territory 
south of Mason and Dixon's line, excluding 
Texas. With the average population of the 
Southern States these grants would contain 
2.580,900 people; with the average of Ohio 
they would contain 9,043,126 people. In 
the case of a single Slate, Ohio, the school 
fund derived irom its grants, carried in ihe 
form of an irreducible debt, is $4,289,718 52. 

4. The purpose of this policy, inaugurated 
by the father.^, was to encourage education, 
and to encourage education because of its 
relation to good government. It must have 
been as obvious then as now that the end 
in view could only be secured by universal 
education — that eveiy one who grew up in 
iguorance would, to that extent, defeat the 
objects of these grants — that is, the logical 
sequence of these grants for public schools 
is universal education, and that means com- 
pulsory education. For tlie want of this it is 
plain that the higli purpose of the fathers 
has failed its fullest realization. 

5. Some consider a compulsory educational 
system impracticable ; others coniend that it 
is not American in fact and spirit; but I as- 
sume that any thing required by the public 
weal must be right, and will be found practi- 
cable when a sentiment in its favor is created. 
The discussions of this Convention are pre- 
paring public tiiought to accept and then de- 
mand a sj-stem that will make common-school 
education universal. I barely mention two 
objections to a coercive system, namely: 

(a) The rights of parents to tiie time and 
service of the child; but the State has an in- 
terest — yea, rights — in the child that is to 
be a citizen, and may properly demand a parr, 
of the child's time for its preparation for 
citizenship; and the child has an inherent 
right to the fair start in the race of life that 
a common-school education gives — a sacred 
right whose benefits should be secured to 
the child by its sovereign guardian, the 
State, if neglected by the parent. 

(6) The rights of conscience involved in 
the parent's wish that the child receive a re- 
ligious school training. Our Constitution is 
careful of all rights of conscience, and it is 
the prerogative of the parent to choose be- 
tween a parochial and a public school. The 
case may be met by three just provisions : 

(1) That the State shall protect, but not 
support, denominational or parochial schools. 

(2) That every child shall have a given 
measure of school advantages — attend either 
a public or private school a given time. 

(3) That every teacher, in private as well 
as in public schools, shall bear a certificate 
of qualification from the State. 

15 



6. Passing for the moment from the recog- 
nized means of the future voter's education, 
I direct your thought for tlio moment to the 
educationfil eflcct of the ballot on the voter. 
Sufi'rage gives rise to political parties, and 
parties cannot exist without organization, 
which means leadership, discussion, and co- 
operation. Tliese have a place in any meth- 
od that may be used to put candidates in 
nomination, and in some degree affect all 
who participate. The political campaign, 
often involving censurable measures, and at- 
tended with much that is farcical and ludi- 
crous, is a means of political education. Un- 
der the excitement of the struggle even the 
sluggish mind is quickened into a receptive 
frame, and thousands who never study a 
public question by the aid of newspaper or 
book, listen with interest to tiieir discussion 
on tiie rostrum. We maj' properly deprecate 
some of the incidents of partisan struggles, 
but in view of the customary indifference of 
some in regard to important questions of 
State and the negligence of others because of 
their intense devotion to business or profes- 
sional demands, it is certain that these State 
and national campaigns awaken an interest 
that conserves the welfare of the country. 
Altliough partisan in their purpose they are 
means of a needful political education. 

7. The effectiveness of this political system 
founded upon the ballot is seen in its results, 
among which are these: 

(«) During the century great questions of 
State — questions growing out of tliree foreign 
wars, monetary questions affecting labor and 
capital in every field of industry, questions 
connected with and subsequent to the great 
civil war — all have been met and so settled 
as to insure peace and general prosperity. 

(&) Many men have risen to honorable 
leadersliip ; many have become distinguished 
statesmen. The ballot called from private to 
public life Webster, Clay, Lincoln, Garfield, 
and all that host of talented men who have 
honored and do honor our country by their 
service in the legislative, judicial, and execu- 
tive departments of the State and national 
governments. 

What of the future? Will the secular 
education of our public schools and the po- 
litical education incident to our civil system 
prepare the voter to carry the governmenc 
successfully forward? I shall answer this 
question by showing that the Bible must 
continue to have a part in preparing the 
voter for the ballot. 

I mention, and only mention, some of the 
gravest facts which are affecting the results 
of the ballot now, and are likely to be more 
potent in the near future: 

(a) The influence of the foreign population. 
The trend of this influence is already seen in 
its effect upon the American Sabbath as well 
as in the liquor question. 23.74 per cent, of 
males of voting age are foreigners, and we 



226 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



raay assume that one fifth of tho citizens are 
naturalized voters. I do not state these facts 
in any spirit of antagonism. So long as we 
revere tlie Declaration of Independence we 
ought to welcome those who really emigrate 
(not those who are transported) to our shores. 
We do bid the people welcome, but not those 
notions and customs that begin to rnar our 
American civilization. 

(6) The influence of our cities. Municipal 
government is already the most defective. 
Cities increase most rapidly, and gather into 
ttiemselves the largest ratio of the pauper 
and vicious classes. One hundred cities of 
20,000 population and upward in 1880 con- 
tained 9,100,863 people, or 18.45 per cent, of 
the people of the thirty-eight States, and 29.94 
per cent, of this population is composed of 
foreigners. Without trying to locate the 
cjmses I cite the fact that the government of 
cities is becoming more difficult as i\\Qy grow 
older and larger. How shall they affect the 
whole problem of government in the near 
future ? 

(c) The status of the primary meeting. 
This is the point of control in American 
politics. The larger conventions, and even 
the elections, seldom do more than to ratify 
what has been settled in tlie primaries. And 
yet their neglect by the better classes of citi- 
zens has made that tjTanny of an unscrupu- 
lous minority known as " bos^sm" a possi- 
bility and an ominous fact. 

I hasten to the question, Can the training 
of the intellect, the aim and end of our secular 
education, prepare voters for such problems 
as are thus at hand? I answer, the conscience 
must be educated as well — educated to dis- 
criminate quickly and sharply between the 
right and the wrong in politics — to discern 
and enforce duty. The only proof of this 
I will now offer are two or three illustrations 
from the past: 

(a) Although there were slaves in tlie 
colonies wlien the national Constitution was 
formed, yet the word slavery is not even 
fnuud in that instrument. In its elimination 
the fathers were not guided by intellect so 
much as impelled by conscience. 

(b) At the same time thej'- provided for the 
abolition of the slave trade, although it was 
then carried on under the flag of every na- 
tion that had a maritime service. Was this 
the behest of the intellect or conscience? 

(c) The slavery question had its place in 
American politics for half a century. There 
was opposition to the system of slavery per 
se ; and oppositioa to its extension into new 



fields. Its ultimate overtlirow was a war 
measure, but why was the result approved 
by the people? Not solely because it seemed 
to be a necessity — a matter of which they 
could not judge — but because their con- 
sciences recognized that it was right. 

Thus illustrations of the force and prov- 
ince of conscience in determining the course 
of our public affairs can be drawn from every 
period of our history. As we turn from the 
study of the grave problems of state which 
have been solved to those which open before 
us now and lie in the near future, who can 
resist the conviction that tlie right — the ab- 
solute right — is the only safe guide ; but con- 
science, quickened aud trained, is the dis- 
cern er of the right. 

The Centenary of the close of the Revolu- 
tionary War has been celebrated at York- 
town : but the American Revolution, of which 
that war was the opening episode, still sweeps 
on. The fathers realized the magnitude of 
the work, and did their part of it well. 
Thomas Jefferson, who "poured the soul of 
the continent into the monumental act of In- 
dependence," revealed the controlling force 
when he said : " Can the liberties of a nation 
be thought secure when we have removed 
their only firm basis, a conviction in the 
minds of the people tlaat these liberties are 
the gifts of God ? that they are not to be 
violated except with his wrath? Indeed, I 
tremble for my country when I reflect that 
God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep 
forever." 

The discernments of conscience are voiced 
in these words, and they indicate how con- 
stantly and completely this potent sense co- 
operated with the intellect in inspiring and 
controlling the people and their leaders in 
their public deeds. 

So the conscience must be potential in its 
sway over the voters in order to the per- 
petuity of ovu- republican institutions. Secu- 
lar education alone cannot educate the con- 
science. Benjamin Franklin said : " A Bible 
and a newspaper in eveiy house — a good 
school in everj' district — all studied and ap- 
preciated as they merit, are the principal sup- 
ports of virtue, moralitj^, and civil liberty." 

[The address was here interrupted by the 
chairman's call of time under the rules, and 
the speaker closed with the following sen- 
tence:] 

The Bible is the text-book of the con- 
science, and it must have its place in the 
education of the American voter. 



CHRIST IN AMERICAN EDUCATION. 



227 



6. SPECIAL SERVICES ON SUNDAY. 



In addition to the three public services at which sermons and addresses 
were delivered, two others of special character were held. The first 
came at nine o'clock in the morning, and was called 

AN EDUCATIONAL LOVE-FEAST. 



THIS interesting service was in charge of 
Rev. I. W. Joyce, D.D., of Cincinnati, 
Ohio, and Mr. Thornley, of Ocean Grove. 
In opening the exercises, Dr. Joyce said: 

The object of the meeting this morning is 
tlie relation of Cliiistian experience in the 
work of education. There is the spiritual as 
well as the intellectual side in all discipline 
involved in this question of education. 

Up to this time, during this assembly, our 
attention has been almost wholly called to 
the intellectual phases of this great work; 
and this was right. But we are now enter- 
ing upon the hours and duties of the holy 
Sabbath, and it is right that now and during 
the day our attention should be turned to the 
exclusively religious side of this question; 
and it has been thought best to occupy this 
early morning hour in statements of religious 
experience on the part of those who are en- 
gaged in the special work of teaching. A 
majorit}'- of the teachers in all our schools are 
Christians, believers in the doctrines and 
work of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Clirist 

They therefore believe that education, to 
be complete, must include both the intellectual 
and spiritual discipline of the pupil. Conse- 
quently they are as zealous in their endeavors 
to have their pupils become Christians as 
they are to have them well disciplined in the 
curriculum of the college. 

It is well, therefore, that this hour has 
been set apart for the relation of experience 
in this line of Christian work. 

The efforts you have put forth ; the success 
of those efforts ; the abiding character of the 
work and its influence, are the subjects for 
conversation this morning. 

In short, what has been your success in 
bringing the pupils of your several schools to 
Christ as their Saviour ? 

The presence of a large number of minis- 
ters and teachers who, during the past few 
years, have been doing missionary work among 
the poor and needy of the Southern States, 
and among the Indians, added much to the 
interest of the occasion. 



The following extracts from a letter were 
read. It was from a lady who has given 
thirteen years to missionary labor in the 
South with her husband. She has for two 
years been an invalid, suffering greatly from 
effects of her Southern work. Her words, so 
full of prayer and faith, found a response in a 
multitude of hearts who heard them : 

How I pray that the Assembly may be. a 
holy thing — owned and blessed and wholly 
directed of God — not a mere sensational affair. 
Life is too short, too serious, with too much 
depending upon it, to have even a day spent 
in vanity. 

I pray that every speaker may be peculiar- 
ly influenced by the Holy Spirit — to see and 
feel the great opportunity before him of im- 
pressing upon a good, intelligent, and patri- 
otic, yes, a devout, people, the pressing needs 
of our beloved country, and the terrible peril 
and disaster which awaits her if her children 
of means do not at once come to her aid. 
Surely ours is a country-loving people, and 
if they can but feel in their hearts that they 
have a work to do it will be done. God alone 
by his Spirit speaking through your men can 
rouse the heart of the hearers, and lead them 
to immediate action. O that every man 
might be a Moses to whom the Lord would 
speak and send forth before your audiences 
at Ocean Grove to proclaim his words 1 

How I wish that there migiit be a band of 
holy people gathered in prayer every morn- 
ing before your services begin, to pray for a 
special and glorious blessing upon every 
service ! 

May the Lord bless Dr. Joyce gloriously in 
his love-feast service Sunday morning. I 
will be praying for a rich, yea, a wonderful, 
baptism upon all present, and I pray that the 
Spirit may go out to every part of the ground, 
and hearts be touched as with a live co(u 
from off the altar. "Then shall ye see great 
things." And let every heart give all the 
GLORY to God — never for one little moment 
asking to take any unto himself. 

What an honor to be suffered to wait upon 
the Lord, >to 'be used by him J 



228 



GHRI8TIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 




ON THE BEA.CH. 



At five P.M. Rev. E. H. Stokes, D.D., con- 
ducted a Beach Meeting Service. Many 
thousan-ds were present, and with the mur- 
muring of old ocean there mingled the songs 
of praise and words of wisdom and exhorta- 
tion. 

Addresses were made by Captain Pratt, 



Dr. C. H. Fowler, Bishop Campbell, Rev. 
Mr. Gould, and Rev. J. C. Price. 

The following service, prepared by Dr. 
Stokes, was united in by the vast throng, 
in reading and singing. Prof. Kirkpatrick 
led the singing, bringing to his aid cornets 
and trained voices. The service was entitled 



■^^VISDOIVI. 



Leader. Wisdom crieth without ; she utter- 
eth her voice in the streets : 

Gong. She crieth in the chief place of con- 
course, in the city she uttereth her words. 

Singing-. 
" Happy the man who finds the grace, 
The blessing of God's chosen race, 
The wisdom coming from above, 
The faith that sweetly works by love. 

" Wisdom divine ! who tells the price 
Of wisdom's costly merchandise ? 
Wisdom to silver we prefer, 
And gold is dross compared to her." 

L. How long, ye simple ones, wiU ye love 
simplicity ? 



G. And the scorners delight in their scorn- 

ings, and fools hate knowledge ? 

L. My son, hear the instruction of thy fa- 
ther, and forsake not the law of thy mother : 

G. For they shall be an ornament of grace 
unto thy head, and chains about thy neck. 

Singing. 

" Her hands are filled with length of days, 
True riches, and immortal praise ; 
Her ways are ways of pleasantness, 
And all her flowery paths are peace. 

'^ Happy the man who wisdom gains ; 
Thrice happy, who liis guest retains; 
He owns, and shall forever own, 
Wisdom, and Christ, and heaven, are one." 



CHRIST IN AMERICAN EDUCATION. 



229 



Prayer. 

L. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of 
wisdom. 

C. A good understanding have all they 
that do his commandments. 

L. Behold the fear of the Lord, that is 
wisdom — 

G. And to depart from evil is understand- 
ing. 

Singing. 

" Workman of God ! lose not heart, 

But learn what G-od is like ; 
And in the darkest battle-field 

Thou shalt know where to strike. 

" Thrice blest is he to whom is given 

Tlie instinct that can tell 
That God is on the field, when he 

Is most invisible." 

L. For the Lord giveth wisdom: out of 
his mouth cometh knowledge and under- 
standing. 

C. He layeth up sound wisdom for the 
righteous ; he is a buckler to them that walk 
uprightly. 

L. He keepeth the paths of judgment, and 
preserveth the way of his saints. 

C. Then slialt thou understand righteous- 
-ness, and judgment, and equity, yea, every 
good path. 

L. When wisdom entereth into thine heart, 
and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul ; 

0. Discretion slaall preserve thee, under- 
standing shall keep thee. 

Singing. 

" How blest is he who can divine, 

Where real right doth lie ; 
And dares to take the side that seems 

Wrong to man's blindfold eye. 

" Then learn to scorn the praise of men, 
And learn to lose witli God ; 

Por Jesus won tlie world through shame, 
And beckons tliee his road." 

L. My son, forget not my law ; but let thy 
heart keep my commandments : 

C. For I give you good doctrine, forsake 
ye not my law. 

L. Get wisdom, get understanding; forget 
it not. 

G. Neither decline from the words of my 
month. 

L. Wisdom is the principal thing; there- 
fore get wisdom : 

G. And with all thy getting get under- 
standing. 

L. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee : 

C. She shall bring thee to honor, when 
thou dost embrace her. 

L. She shall give to thine head an orna- 
ment of grace ; 

G. A crown of glory shall she deliver to 
thee. 



Singing. 

" Down at the cross where the Saviour died, 
Down where for cleansing from sin I cried. 
There to my heart was the blood applied, 
Glory to his name. 

Rep. — '■ Glory to his name ; 

Glory to his name ; 
There to my heart was the blood applied, 

Glory to his name." 

L. Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, 
and the man that getteth understanding ; 

G. For the merchandise of it is better than 
the merchandise of silver, and the gain there- 
of than fine gold. 

L. She is more precious than rubies ; and 
all the things thou canst desire are not to be 
compared unto her. 

G. Lengtli of days is in her right hand; 
and in her left hand riches and honor. 

All. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, 
and all her paths are peace. 

Singing. 

" For the love of God is broader 
Tlian the measure of man's mind ; 

And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind. 

"If our love were but more simple. 
We should take him at his word ; 

And our lives would be all sunshine 
In the sweetness of our Lord." 

L. If thou seekest her as silver, and search- 
est for her as for hid treasure ; 

G. Then shalt thou understand the fear of 
the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. 

L. If any of you lack wisdom, let iiim ask 
of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and 
upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. 

G. But let him ask in faith, nothing waver- 
ing; for he that waveretli is like a wave ©f 
the sea driven with the wind and tossed. 

L. Who is a wise man and endued with 
knowledge among you ? 

G. Let him show out of a good conversa- 
tion his works with meekness of wisdom. 

L. But the wisdom that is from above is 
first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to 
be entreated. 

G. Full of mercy and good fruits, without 
partiality, and without hypocrisy. 

Singing. 

" He leadeth me I blessed thought ! 
words with heavenly comfort fraught I 
Whate'er I do, where'er I be. 
Still 'tis God's hand that leadeth me. 

"He leadeth me, he leadeth me, 
By his own hand he leadeth me; 
His faithful follower I would be, 
For by his hand he leadeth me." 

L. For the preaching of the cross is to 
them that perish foohshness ; 



230 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



C. But unto U3 which are saved, it is the 
power of God. 

L. For it is written, I will destroy the 
wisdom of the wise, 

G. And will bring to nothing the under- 
standing of tlie prudent. 

JL Where is the wise ? where is the scribe ? 
where is the disputer of tliis world ? 

G. Hath not God made foolish the wisdom 
of this world? 

L. For after that in the wisdom of God 
the world by wisdom knew not God, 

G. It pleased God by the foolishness of 
preachiBg tO' save them that believe. 

Singing. 

" By faith we know thee strong to save ; 

Save us, a present Saviour thou ; 
Whate'er w© hope, by faith we have; 

Future and past subsisting now. 

" Faith lends its realizing light ; 

The clouds disperse, the shadows Qy ; 
The invisible appears in sight, 

And God is seen by mortal eye." 

L. For the Jews require a sign, 

O. And the Greeks seek after wisdom. 



L. But we preach Christ crucified, 

C. Unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and 
unto the Greeks foolishness. 

L. But unto them which are called, both 
Jews and Greeks, 

C Christ the power of God, and the wisdom 
of God. 

L. If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for 
thyself; 

G. But if thou scomest, thou alone shalt 
bear it. 

Singing. 

" Still let thy wisdom be my guide, 

Nor take thy flight from me away 
Still with me let thy grace abide. 

That I from thee may never stray 
Let thy word richly in me dwell. 

Thy peace and love my portion be 
My joy to endure and do thy will. 

Till perfect I am found in thee." 

L. Eiches and honor are with me; yea, 
durable riches and righteousness. 

C. My fruit is better than gold, yea, than 
fine gold ; my revenue than choice silver. 



DOXOLOGY. 



Benediction. 



X. LAST WORDS. 



1. SUMMARY OF THE WORK, AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE 

ASSEMBLY. 



KEY. A. J. KYNETT, D.D., OF PHILADELPHIA. 



I HAVE been asked to summarize this 
conveatiou in the space of ten or fifteen 
minutes. To do justice to this task I 
should have an hour, and I should have had 
notice from the beg'inning so that 1 might 
have studied it carefully from the first. But 
such thoughts as I have, in the brief com- 
pass of time allotted me, I will give those of 
you who will stay, and, of course, I cannot 
give them to those of you who go away. 

The representative character of this con- 
vention is one of its most striking character- 
istics. Territorially, there have been repre- 
sentatives on this platform from Massachu- 
setts to Louisiana, from Florida to Alaska. 
Sixteen different States and Territories, in- 
cluding with them the District of Columbia, 
have been represented from the platform and 
on the programme. T suppose all the States 
and Territories have been represented in the 
Congregation. 

In the personnel of the convention, and 
those who have taken part in its proceedings, 
we have a corresponding variety of the min- 
istry and the laity. Next, there have been 
educators — the Commissioner of Education 
of the United States, college presidents, 
principals of academies, and teachers in all 
grades of schools. Ecclesiastically, six or 
seven of the Christian denominations of 
tlie country have been represented ; the 
Methodists have been here in force — three 
diJferent branches of the Methodist family ; 
the Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Congre- 
gationalists, the Episcopalians, and I know 
not what other branches of the Christian 
family; the Quakers have been represented 
on this platform during these four days, and 
the Unitarians — and they are all catholics, 
80 that the Catholic Church of Christ has 
been truly represented from this platform. 

There has been great variety in the aspect 
of those who have been present. Tlie races 
— most of them — have been represented on 
the platform — I was going to say the Ameri- 



can races, but I will not — so that this Edu- 
cational Convention has been quite cosmo- 
politan in its character. 

And we have been here for one grand 
purpose, with unanimity of opinion, and 
came to this peerless Christian sea-side re- 
sort that in fourteen years has grown fro'ii 
nothing to be the greatest Christian resort 
upon which the sun shines to-day, and this 
educational work has joined most harmo- 
niously with the grand purpose for which 
Ocean Grove was instituted and establislied ; 
so that we ma,y come together and uniie in 
reading the words with which you linve 
ornamented these walls: " We are come to 
Mount Zion, the city of the Living God." 

It is a grand convention. We are liere 
for a great purpose, an educational purpose, 
for Christian education, to study, analyze, 
understand, and promote Ciiristian education 
upon Ciiristian foundations. We are here 
because we believe it is pos.''.ible to know 
something; we are not agnostics; I had h<df 
a mind to say that this convention was about 
as conspicuous for the absence as for the 
presence of certain things I have alluded to. 
Imagine j'ourselves, if you can, conducting 
to the front and introducing to the audience 
the President of the Liquor Dealers' Asso- 
ciation of the United States, or the President ■ 
of the Brewers' Congress of tlie United 
States ; or imagine a representative here 
of that meeting a year ago, at Watkins 
Glen, of Hie infidelity of the country ! 
We are liere to promote Christian edu- 
cation upon tlie foundation of things that 
are knowable, and in a study of such sub- 
jects as shall educate liie wliole man, and 
so it; is Christian education. Why, I have 
heard how friends have done in celebrating 
their college occasions, until I have been re- 
minded of a possible convention of the 
manufacturers of head-lights for railroad lo- 
comotives getting together and telling the 
world what marvelous things they have.ac- 



232 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



complislied in the railroad interests of tlie 
country. Why, just see how the h'ght shines 
out upon tiie track and ouables the engineer 
to avoid tiie danger. There is a good deal 
more than head-light. 

Now, I suppose I ouglit to indicate some 
conception of tliis meeting's pi'obable result. 
It imparls entliusiasni ; I am talking six 
times as loud as I need to, simply becau.se of 
the enthusiasm I leel. You have been filled 
to overflowing with it during the last four 
days. You have heard addresses that have 
started new lines of thought, and have put 
in action elements of power that will remain 
in force during the year to come. Public 
opinion is to be cultivated and fashioned 
and strengthened on the lines of right ac- 
tion, not only through the influence of those 
who have been here, but through the in- 
strumentality of the published proceedings. 



as we shall have them, and I do not want 
one of you to forget them. Things have 
been said that I desire to sit down and 
study by the hour. Information has been 
given that I desire to store away so that I 
can use it in the years to come. We hope 
that we shall stop killing the Indians, and 
put all their children in the schools ; and if 
the African is in America to stay, we will 
bestir ourselves a little more for tiie uplifting 
of the American races. We liope the utter- 
ances of this convention will stir anew the 
Executive at Washington in regard to the 
Mormon question. I believe it to be a 
greater peril than the American people have 
apprehended. We hope tlie influences of 
this convention will last a year, and then 
we will come together and hold another that 
will be as much better than this as this is 
better than the convention of a year ago. 



2. CLOSING REMARKS. 



REV. J C. HAETZELL, D.D. 



After Dr. Ktnett's remarks, the Chairman of the closing session, Gen. 
Eatok, said, that in spite of Dr. Haetzell's dislike to do so, he would 
insist upon that gentleman saying a few parting words. Dr. Haetzell 
said: 



MY prayer has been answered in the estab- 
hshment of this platform, here at Ocean 
Grove, where once a year the best Christian 
thought of the nation can meet and study, 
from a Christian stand-point, the great ques- 
tions of education and practical reform, re- 
lating to our illiterate and despised masses. 
To tlie splendid men who, without regard to 
section,Church, or party, at ray request, have 
contributed their valuable time, and carefully 
wrought out papers or addresses, I return 
hearty thanks, not only on behalf of myself, 
but also on behalf of the thousands who 
have been present during the Assembly. 
Great credit is due Hon. John Eaton, our 



honored United States Commissioner of Edu- 
cation, without whose kindljr aid during ihe 
year, and his presence here, such a success 
as we have had would have been impossible. 
Whatever I have had to do in making the 
Assembly a success has been done under a pro- 
found conviction of dut}'; and the success of 
the two Assemblies held, assures me that my 
conviction was of tlie Lord. In saying good- 
bye, I call upon all lovers of our common 
Saviour, who have enjoyed these meetings, to 
unite in a prayer that Christian patriots may 
rule our land, and that Christian thought may 
permeate and direct every phase of education 
in this nation. Amen, and Amen. 



XI. HISTORICAL NOTES. 



THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSEMBLY FOR 1882. 

The annual series of popular Educational Assemblies at Ocean Grove began in 1882. 
To preserve the record, and as a matter of interest, a few notes are given on the origin 
and work of the first Assembly. 

The proceedings were not published in pamphlet form, but many prominent secular and 
religious newspapers gave extended accounts of tlie Assembly and its work. 

Speaking of the Assembly of ] 882, ilie Nmu England Journal of Education, in referring 
to its relation to national aid to common sciiools, said: "The meeting at Ocean Grove may 
be regarded as tlie beginning of a great national campaign, which will not cease till victory 
is inscribed on our banners." 

The following is the programme as it was carried out: 

NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSEMBLY, 

Ocean Grove, N. J., 
J?lXJG5-XJST' 8 and 9, 1883. 

CONDUCTED BY 

Rev. J. C. HARTZELL, D.D. 



** Education is the Cheap Defense of Nations." 



Morning Session — 10 to 12 o'clock. 
BISHOP COXB, of New York, presided, and made introductory remarks. 

1. INTRODUCTORY RELIGIOUS EXERCISES, conducted by Rev. E. H. Stokes, D.D., 

Piesident of Ocean Grove Association. 
Dr. Stokes delivered an address of welcome. 

2. OPENING ADDRESS, by Hon. John Eaton, United States Commissioner of Educa- 

tion, Washington, D. 0. 

Afternoon Session — 3 to 5 o'clock. 

Dr. H. R. "WAITE, Special Educational and Religious Statistician, United States Census, 

presided. 

EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE.— Subject: " Our Illiterate Masses." 
ILLITERACY OF UNITED STATES was illustrated by maps, by Dr. Hartzell. 
SHORT ADDRESSES, by Gen. Rusling, of New Jersey ; Rev. Dr. L. R. Fiske, of Mich- 
igan, and Prof. Caldwell, of Tennessee. 

Evening Session — 7:45 to 9:45 P. M. 
GEN. EATON presided. 

1. EDUCATION AMONG THE INDIANS, by Capt. Pratt, of Carlisle Train in g-School. 

2. EDUCATION IN ALASKA, by Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D., Superintendent of tlie 

Presbyterian Missions in Rocky Mountains and Alaska. 

3. ADDRESS, by Hon. B. Peters, Editor of the Daily Times, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



234 



CHEISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



Morning Session — 10 to 12 o^ clock. 
PROP. G. S. W. CRAWFORD, State Superintendent of Education in Tennessee, presided. 

SUBJECT: "Education in the Southern States since the War, accomplished by Christian 

Benevolence of the North." 
ADDRESSES by the following: Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., New York, of the Congrej?a- 

tional Church; Hon. J. M. Gregory, LL.D., Illinois, of the Baptist Church; Rev. 

R. H. Allen, D.D., Pennsylvania, of the Presbyterian Church; Rev. J. C. Habtzell, 

D.D., Louisiana, of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

Afternoon Session — 3 to 4;30 o^clock. 
BISHOP SIMPSON presided. 
SUBJECT: "The Church and Education." 

ADDRESSES, by Bishop M. Simpson, LL.D., of Philadelpliia; Rev. Hentiy A. Bottz, of 
New Jersey, and Rev. J. P. Spence, D.D., of Tennessee. 

Evening Session — 1:45 to 8:45 o^clock. 

SUBJECT: "Measures proposing National Aid to Public Schools now before Congress. 
ADDRESS, by Hon. H. W. Blair, United States Senator from New Plampshire. 
CLOSING REMARKS. Speeches limited to five minutes. 



Prof. J. R. SWENET, of Philadelphia, was in charge of the music during the Assembly. 



Memorial to Congress. — One practical result of this Assembly was the adoption of a 
memorial to Congress. 



The Cotigressional Globe of December 14, 1882, contains the following: 



Congressional Record, United States — 
Senate proceedings, December 12, 1882. 

Mr. Blair. — During tlie vacation there was 
held at Ocean Grove, New Jersej'', a very 
important Assembly of the different relig- 
ious denominations of the country, repre- 
sented by tlieir leading clergymen, upon the 
subject of national aid to education. This 
memorial is signed by Bishop A. C. Coxe, of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church ; Bishop M. 
Simpson, of the Methodist Episcopal Church ; 
Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., of the Congrega- 
tional Church; Rev. J. M. Gregory, D.D., 
representing the Baptist Church; Rev. R. H. 
Allen, D.D, of the Presbyterian Church; 
Rev. J. C. Hartzell, D.D., of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, and Prof. G. S. W. Craw- 
ford, State Superintendent of Public Instruc- 
tion in Tennessee. 

There was a very large gathering of cler- 
gymen and other influential men connected 
with the religious organizations of the coun- 
try. They gave a very emphatic and earnest 
expression of their sentiment upon this 
subject, and have sent here their memorial, 
which I should be very glad to have read ; 
but as it would, perhaps, take a little too 
touch of the time of the Senate, I ask 
that it be printed in the Record, and along 
with it the letter of transmission by the Sec- 



retary of the association, Dr. C. C. Painter ; 
and I ask the attention of the Senate to this 
matter, as it will appear in the Record to- 
morrow morning. 

The President ^roifemjjore. — The memorial 
will be referred to the Committee 

Mr. Blair. — It should lie on the table. 
The bills in reference to which this memorial 
is presented have been reported and have 
been made a special order for the 9th 
of January, and, therefore, I move that the 
memorial lie on the table. 

The President pro tempore. — It will lie on 
the table and be printed in the Record if there 
be no objection. 

The papers are as follows : 

National Education Committee. 
(Object — National Aid to Common Schools.) 
Washington, D. C, December 13, 1882. 

My Dear Sir : As Secretary of the National 
Education Committee, I have been intrusted 
with the inclosed memorial to Congress, 
which I beg leave to introduce tlirougii you. 

In the Assembly which organized this 
Committee at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, on 
the 8th and 9th of last August, was largely 
represented the earnest religious and educa- 
tional forces of the country, its culture, 
philanthropy, and statesmanship, so that it 



UISTORIOAL NOTES. 



235 



was truly a national assembly. And in 
this memorial it has voiced the deepest 
convictions and desires of the people in 
regard to the subject-malLor of this memorial. 
lam, sir, in behalf of the Committee, 
Very truly yours, etc., 

C. C. Painter, 
Sec. Nat. Ed. Com. 
Hon, H. W. Blair, United States Senate. 

OF THE 

NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSEMBLY. 

To the Honorable the Senate and 

House of Representatives of the 

Congress of the United States: 
The National Bducadon Assembly, con- 
vened at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, August 
8 and 9, 1882, representing the leading 
Christian denominations of the United States, 
and prominent friends of education from a 
majority of the States, respectfully relate — 

1, That these great bodies of Christian 
citizens have been engaged during all the 
years since the war, through their agents 
and teachers, in teaching the Freedmen of 
the South, the Indians in the Territories, and 
the Illiterates of Utah, and other sections ; 
that they have expended in this work millions 
of dollars, contributed by Christian and phil- 
anthropic citizens; that they have thus 
given education to many thousands of the 
young, and have trained tliousands of teach- 
ers for the public schools of the destitute 
sections of our country, and they have or- 
ganized and are now sustaining a large 
number of schools and institutions of learn- 
ing in those sections. 

2. They have thus become acquainted with 
the deplorable character of that vast mass of ig- 
norance and illiteracy which the census shows 
to exist in those sections of our common coun- 
try, and can of their own knowledge testify to 
the urgent need of education, a need much be- 
yond the present power of the people, though 
aided by Christian philanthropy, to meet. 



3. Holding with the ablest and best of the 
Presidents of the Republic, from Washington 
to Arthur, that it is the riglit and duty of the 
Government to promote the education of the 
people, and believing that no power short of 
that of the general government is able and 
prepared to meet the present pressing, if not 
dangerous, emergency growing out of the 
enormous extent of illiteracy, we unite with 
great numbers of eminent citizens, from all 
parts of the Union, in petitioning Congress to 
make speedy and adequate provision for the 
removal of this illiteracy by securing to all the 
children of the country the means for such 
education as is necessary to good and worthy 
citizenship. 

4. Pressed by the magnitude and urgency 
of this great work, the need of which many 
of us have seen with our own eyes, we urge 
upon the representatives in Congress not to 
allow another session to close without appro- 
priating from the national treasury such 
a sum of money as, added to the local 
funds and taxes, shall maintain the needful 
schools for all sections, and thus relieve our 
beloved land from a shadow so dark and 
an evil so full of menace to national peace 
and safety. 

Bishop A. C. CoxE, 

Protestant Episcopal Church, 
Bishop M. Simpson, 

Methodist Episcopal Church, 
Rev. M. B. Strieby, D.D., 

Congregational Church, 
Rev. J. M. Gregory, D.D., 

Baptist Church, 
Rev. R. H. Allen, D.D., 

Presbyterian Church, 
Eev. J. C. Hartzell, D.D., 

Methodist Episcopal Church, 
Prof. G. S. W. Crawford, 

State Sup. Pub. Ins. Tenn., 
Committee. 
A true copy : 

C. C. Painter, 
Sec. of Nat. Ed. Committee. 



Another, and perhaps the chief, practical result of the Assembly of 1882 was the appoint- 
ment of this National Education Committee, having for its object the awakening and 
direction, by correspondence, petitioning, and otherwise, of public sentiment in tavor of 
national aid to common schools; the objective point being to influence Congress to take 
immediate action upon this burning question. 



NATIONAL EDUCATION COMMITTEE FOR 1882-3. 



Bishop Matthew Simpson, LL.D., Pennsyl- 
vania, President. 

Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., New York, Chair- 
man Executive Committee. 

Hon. J. V. Wilson, D.D., Washington, D. C, 
Treasurer. 

Prof. C. C. Painter, Tennessee, Correspond- 
ing Secretary. 

Rev. J. 0. Haktzell, D.D., Louisiana. 



Hon. J. M. Gregory, Elinois. 

Hon. J. L. M. Curry, Virginia. 

Gen. S. C. Armstrong, Virginia. 

Rev. R. H. Allen, D.D., Pennsylvania. 

Rev. A. D. Mayo, Massachusetts. 

Rev. A. G. Haygood, D.D., Georgia. 

Hon. Benjamin Tatum, New Tork. 

Rev. C. K. Bliss, Illinois. 

Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D., New York. 



r 




3^ 



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— 'X. • ^ Jt 











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t i. _ 



JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 337 



XII. JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS 

OP THE 

Second National Education Assembly, 

Held at Ocean Grove, U. J., August 9, 10, 11, and 12, 1883. 



Conducted by Rev. J. C. HARTZELL, D.D. 



First Day, Thursday, August 9. 

MORNING SESSION, 10 A.M. 

The opening religious exercises were conducted by Rev. E. H. 
Stokes, D.D., President Ocean Grove Camp-meeting Association. Rev. 
E. CooKE, D.D,, President of Claflin University, bouth Carolina, made 
the opening prayer. 

In vi^elcoming the Assembly, Dr. Stokes said: 

A few years ago, I stood on the Canada side of the Niagara River. I found that a few 
days before M. Blondin had been there and arranged for crossing tliat dangerous stream, 
which, as those of you who have been there know, flows between banks 140 feet high. 
This crossing was to be done upon a cord. He adjusted his rope, took a wheelbarrow, 
cooking-stove, cooking utensils, and went out to the center of the river, stopped his wheel- 
barrow, cooked an omelette, ate it, and passed over to the other side. 

"Why did he not fall off"? How in the world could a man cross over on a rope with a 
wheelbarrow, cooking-stove, cooking utensils, prepare his food and eat it, over the boiling 
river below, on a rope, and pass to the other side in safety? I never saw such a per- 
formance, and never want to. I do not think my nerves would endure the strain. 

I understand, however, that the simple method b}"- which he maintained his equilibrium, 
was a long balancing-pole, with heavy weishts on either end. When he found himself 
inclining one way he bore the other, and thus poised, passed over the chasm and landed 
safely on the other side. Religion and education, with their massive weiglits on either end, 
constitute the balancing-pole, by which we pass from one bank to the other, over the 
swirling waters of human life. 

When you separate the one from the other, it is almost absolutely certain that you will 
fall into the chasm beneath. 

Heaven grant that this separation may never take place ! 

I am honored to-da}'', and you, composing this large congregation, are also honored in 
having representatives among us, from the various denominations of Cliristians and from 
lofty positions in the state, men high in ecclesiastical and political preferment, from differ- 
ent parts of the land ; and we are all highl}^ honored, I say, in having these representatives 
of the great cause of education among us, and doubly honored because they will continue 
with us for a number of days. I am also happ}"- to believe that all these gentlemen, stand- 
ing so high in their representative capacities in the cause of education, stand equally high 
in their advocacy of the claims of our holy religion. So that religion and education, and 
education and religion, clasp hands among us to-day and kiss each other. 

I simply here and now take time, in the name and on behalf of the Ocean Grove Camp- 
meeting Association, and in the name of our common Lord, to welcome you to these 
grounds. 

Gentlemen, representatives of religion and education, you are welcome here. 



238 CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 

Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., Secretary American Missionary Associa- 
tion, presided in the absence of Governor Pattison, of Pennsylvania. 

First Words, by Rev. J. C. Haetzell, D.D. (See page 6.) 

Opening Address, "Education and Man's Improvement," by Hon. 
John Eaton, LL.D., United States Commissioner of Education. 
(See page 7.) 

Benediction by Rev. R. S. Rust, D.D., of Cincinnati 



AFTEHNOON" SESSION, 3 P.M. 

Subject: ^'Xational Aid to Common Schools." 

Rev. M. E, Strieby, D.D., Secretary American Missionary Associa- 
tion, presided. 

Opening Prayer by Rev. B, T. Tanner, Editor Christian Recorder, 
Philadelphia. 

Report of Year's Work of National Education Committee, by Prof. 
C. C. Painter, of Tennessee, Cor. Sec. (See page 35.) 

On motion of Hon. John Eaton, seconded by Dr. R. S. Rust, the re- 
port was accepted, and a hearty vote of thanks was returned to Prof. 
Painter for his faithful work. 

A Paper, " National Aid to Popular Education in Europe," by Hon. J. 
P. Wickersham, of Pennsylvania. (See page 38.) 

Address, " Conditions and Prospects of Temporary National Aid 
to Common Schools," by Hon. H. W. Blair, IJnited States Senator 
from New Hampshire. (See page 41.) 

Benediction by Gen. T. J. Morgan, of Potsdam, N. Y. 



EVENING SESSION, 7.45 P.M. 
Subject : " Our Illiterate Masses." 

Rev. Herrick Johnson, D.D., of Chicago, presided. (His address 
will be found on page 17.) 

The Opening Prayer was made by Rev, Mr. Van Meter, of Rome, 
Italy. 

A Paper, by Hon. B. Peters, Editor Times, Brooklyn, N. Y., entitled 
" Illiteracy in our Great Cities." (See page 18.) 

Address, "Stumbling-Blocks, or Stepping-Stones?" by Robert R. 
Doherty, Esq., Assistant Editor The Christian Advocate, New 
York. (See page 21.) 

Address, "The Danger of Delay," by Hon. Albion W. Touegee, 
Editor The Continent, (See page 25.) 



JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 289 

Second Day, Friday, August lo. 

MORNING SESSION, 10 A.M. 

Subject : " The Negro in America." 

Rev. R. S. Rust, D.D., of Ohio, Secretary Freedraen's Aid Society 
of the M. E. Church, presided, and spoke, (See page 55.) 

Opening Prayer was made by Bishop William F. Dickerson, D.D., 

of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. 

Dr. Haetzell announced a telegram from Shreveport, La., District 
Conference, (see page 206,) and read extracts from a paper by Rev. C. K. 
Marshall, D.D., of Mississippi. (See page 77.) 

A Paper, " The Danger Line in Negro Education," by Rev. W. H. 
Ward, D.D., Editor Independent, New York. (See page 67.) 

Address by Rev. J. C. Price, A.M., of Salisbury, N. C, "The Negro in 
America : His Special Work." (See page 72.) 

A Paper, " The Color Line : What it Is, and What it Threatens," by 
Rev. B. T. Tanner, D D., Editor Christian Recorder, Philadelphia. 
(See page 56.) 

A Paper, "The Negro and his Assimilation in America," by Rev. 
J. W. Hamilton, Pastor People's Church, Boston. (See page 58.) 

Address, by Bishop J. P. Campbell, of the African Methodist 
Episcopal Church, " Assimilation, Not Separation." (See page 66.) 

Benediction by Rev. C. H. Fowler, LL.D., of New York. 



AFTERNOON SESSION, 3 P.M. 

Rev. H. L. Morehouse, D.D., Secretary American Baptist Home 

Mission Society, i:»resided and spoke. 

Opening Prayer by Gen. T. J. Morgan, of Potsdam, N. Y. 

A Paper, " Education an Indispensable Agency in the Redemption of 
the Negro Race," by Prof. S. B. Darnell, B.D., of Florida. (See 
page 62.) 

A Paper, "The Relation of Education to Wealth and Morality and to 
Pauperism and Crime," by Hon. Dexter A. Hawkins, A.M., of 
New York. (See page 79.) 

Address, " Relation of Education to Moral Character," by Rev. C. 
W. CusHiNG, D.D., of Rochester, N. Y. (See page 87.) 

Address, "The South, the North, and the Nation Keeping School," 
by Rev. A. D. Mayo, of Boston. (See page 157.) 

Benediction by Rev. J. A. Dean, D.D., President New Orleans LTni- 
versity. 



EVENING SESSION, 7.45 P.M. 

Public reception of Missionary Teachers and Preachers who have la 
bored in the South from the North since the war. 

Hon. John Eaton, LL.D., of Washington, D. C, presided. 



240 OHBISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 

Opening Prayer by Rev. Dr. King, President Iowa Wesleyan Uni- 
versity. 

Address of Welcome by Rev. C. H. Fowler, D.D., LL.D,, of New 

York. (See page 167.) 

Responsive Addresses : 

On behalf of Congregationalists, Prof. Saulsbury, Educational Su- 
perintendent American Missionary Association. (See page 173.) 

On behalf of Methodist Episcopal Church, President John 
Braden, D.D., of Tennessee. (See page 178.) 

Note. — Addresses were also expected by representatives of the Baptist and Presbyte- 
rian Churclies, oiitlinino: the work of these bodies in the South. Although not presented at 
the Assembly these addresses will be found at pages 188 and 195; also addresses bearing 
on the same subject by Drs. Strieby and Habtzsll at Assembly of 1882. 

Address, by Gen. S, C. Armstrong, of Hampton Institute, Virginia. 
(See page 187.) 

Address, " Education in the South," by Rev. J. G. Yaiighan, B.D., of 
New Orleans. (See page 202.) 

On motion of Rev. Lemuel Moss, D.D., of Indiana, a resolution was 
adopted expressive of the sentiment of the Assembly toward the minis- 
ters and teachers who have labored in the South from the North since 
the war. (See page 206.) 

On motion of Dr. Strieby, a resolution was adopted on National Aid 
to Common Schools. (See page 34.) 

Benediction by Rev. T. B. Neely, A.M., of Reading, Pa. 



Third Day, Saturday, August ii. 

MORNINa SESSION, 10 A.M. 

Subject : " The American Indian ProMem." 

Gen. Clinton B. Fisk, President United States Indian Commission, 
was to have presided, but by letter stated that he was called West on 
official business. Gen. T. J. Morgan, Principal State Normal School, 
Potsdam, N. Y., presided, and spoke. (See page 91.) 

Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D., of New York, offered prayer. 

Dr. Hartzell read an important letter from Hon. H. M. Teller, 
Secretary of the Interior. (See page 91.) 

A Paper, " The Legal Status of the Indian," by Henry S. Pancoast, 
Esq., Philadelphia. (See page 93.) 

A Paper, " Practical Results of Indian Education," by J. M. Ha- 
WORTH, Esq., Supt. U. S. Indian Schools. (See page 107.) 

Address, " Woman's Work in Solving the Indian Problem," by Mrs. 
A. S. QuiNTON, General Secretary National Indian Association. 
(See page 102.) 

Address, by Herbert Welsh, Esq., of Philadelphia, " Christianity in 
its Relations to Indian Civilization." (See page 99.) 



JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 241 

A Paper, by H. K. Carroll, Esq., Assistant Editor New York Inde- 
pendent, " What Shall be Done with our Savages ?" (See page 106.) 

Benediction by Rev. E. H. Stokes, D.D. 



AFTERNOON SESSION, 3 P.M. 
Bishop DiCKERSOif, of the African M. E. Church, presided. 
Opening Prayer by Rev. D. P. Kidder, D.D., of New York. 

A Paper, " Indian Civilization a Success," by Capt. H. R. Pratt, Prin- 
cipal of Carlisle Training-School. (See page 114.) 

Address, "A New Phase of the Question," by Rev. C. H. Kidder, of 
Wilkesbarre, Pa. (See page 105.) 

Address, " The Native Tribes of Alaska," by Rev. Sheldon Jack- 
sox, D.D., Superintendent of Presbyterian Missions in Alaska. 
(See page 118.) 

Dr. Hartzell announced letters of regret from Hon. Hiram Price, 
of Washington, and others. (See page 127.) 

The several members of the Indian Band were introduced to the audi- 
ence, and a brief sketch of the life of each was given by Capt. Pratt. 



EVENING SESSION, 7.45 P.M. 

Rev. A. J. Kynett, of Philadelphia, presided. 

Opening Prayer by Rev. A. K. Belting. 

Dr. Hartzell gave extracts from several letters from various parts of 
the country. (See pages 138, 146.) 

Address by Rev. L. B. Caldwell, Ph.D., of Tennessee, on "The 
Poor Whites of the South : Who they are and Why they are." 
(See page 31.) 

Gen. T. J. Morgan offered a resolution on the American Indian 
Problem. It was adopted. (See page 127.) 

Rev. A. J. Ktnett, D.D., spoke on " The Utah Problem." (See page 
129.) 

Address, " Mormonism : Efforts of Christian Churches," by Rev. H. 
Kendall, D.D., Secretary of Board of Presbyterian Home Missions. 
(See page 130.) 

Note. — Two valuable papers bearing on the Mormon Problem, namely, "Polygamy 
Woman's Creed of Mormonipm," by Mrs. Angie F. Newman, (see page 141,) and "The 
Doctrines of Mormonisin," by Prof. Theophilus B. Hiltox, A.M.. B.D., (see page 147,) are 
inserted in the body of the work because of their importance and timeliness. 

Address, "The Ballot and the Bible," by Rev. J. M. Walden, LL.D., 

of Ohio. (See page 223.) 

On motion of Dr. Cooke, of South Carolina, the following resolutions 
were adopted : 

Resolved, That this Education Assembly tender its thanks to tlie Ocean Grove Asso- 
ciation for the use of its grounds and auditorium and many conveniences for the holding of 
these meetings, as well as for their hearty welcome. 
16 



243 ■ CHBISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 

Resolved, That this Assembly heartily thinks the representatives of the press who have 
so faithfully aud correcily reported the proceedings. 

On motion of Rev. Dr. King, of Iowa, the following resolution of 
thanks to Gen. Eaton was adopted: 

Resolved, That this Education Assembly heartily expresses its high appreciation of the 
presence and assistance of Hon. John Eaton, United States Commissioner of Education, 
in our work. We thank him for his comprehensive and sciiolarly addi'ess. We desire 
also to record our judgment that the Educational Bureau, over which he presides, and 
which has been chiefly developed under him, during the past 13 years, is essential to the 
progress of education in this country. 

Rev. E. H. Stokes, D.D., President of the Ocean Grove Association, 
presented the following: 

In the name and on behalf of the Ocean G-rove Camp-meeting Association of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, I feel profound satisfaction in returning thanks to this National 
Education Assembly for honoring us this second time with its presence. Men of honor- 
able positions in Church and State, of great learning, broad views, and catholic spirit, have 
spoken to us on high themes, involving the welfare of millions living and of millions yet 
unborn. To these men, who have addressed us in words of such burning eloquence as 
iiave enthused the vast multitudes which have attended these services, including Dr. Hart- 
ZELL, who has worked out the details of this great programme, we return sincerest thanks. 

To the ladies who have spoken, labored, or sympathized with the cause of education 
for the illiterate masses, and to all ministers, leacliers, and others, whether white or col- 
ored, who have worked, prayed, or contributed to this Christ-like cause, we return our 
thanks; and to our brethren of the forest, sons of the red man, whom we have too long 
wronged, but are now laboring to bless, who have given us inspiring music during this ses- 
sion, we also extend our hearty thanks. 

And, in conclusion, believing that this Assembly, in its aims, is in harmony with our 
work in this place, we hereby extend to it a cordial and hearty invitation to hold its next 
session here in the summer of 1884. 

On motion of Dr. Hartzell, a resolution was adopted on the Mor- 
mon Question. (See p. 146.) 

The following resolutions were adopted: 

Resolved, That we accept the invitation of the Ocean Grove Association, and hold our 
session for 1 884 at this place. 

Resolved, That we re-elect the members of the National Education Committee and its 
officers for 1883-84, and that it be instructed to prosecute its work with such modifications 
as it may tliink wise. 

The Committee is as follows: 

National Education Committee for 1883-84. 

Bishop M. Simpson, of Pennsylvania, Chairman. 
Hon. J. D. Wilson, of Washington, Treasurer. 
Prof. C. C. Painter, of Tennessee, Correspoyiding Secretary. 
Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., of New York, Chairman Executive Com- 
mittee. 

Rev. J. C. Hartzell, D.D., of Louisiana. 

Hon. J. M. Gregory, of Illinois. 

Hon, J. L. M. Curry, of Virginia. 

Gen. S. C. Armstrong, of Virginia. 

Rev. R. H, Allen, D.D., of Pennsylvania. 

Rev. A. G. Haygood, D.D., of Georgia. 

Benjamin Tatum, Esq., of New York. 

Rev. C. R. Bliss, of Illinois. 

Hon. A. D. Mayo, of Boston. 

Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D., of New York. 



JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 248 

On motion of Gen. Eaton, the following resolution of thanks to Dr. 
Hartzell was adopted: 

Resolved, That, profoundly impressed, as we are, with the necessity for the education of 
every child of eveiy race in our land, and that Christian influence should liavc its full 
weight in that education, we who have enjoyed this series of great and inspiring meetr 
ings of the National Education Assembly, at Ocean Grove, do most heartily thank Rev. 
J. 0. Hartzell, D.D., for organizing them, and for undertaking and carrying out tlie plan 
of establishing^ here a platform on which all Christian sentiment can unite and express it- 
self in favor of* the great measures required for the removal of illiteracy among all classes, 
tliat we may be forever one people, having one country, where all rnay serve God accord- 
ing to the dictates of their consciences. 

Benediction by Bishop W. L. Harris, of New York. 



Fourth Day, Sunday, August 12. 
Subject for the Day: ^'Christ in American Education." 

AT 9 A.M. 

Educational Love-Feast, led by Rev. I. W. Joyce, D.D., of Cin- 
cinnati, assisted by Mr. Thornley, of Ocean Grove. (See page 217.) 



MORNING SESSION, 10.30 A.M. 

Bishop W. L. Harris, LL.D., of New York, presided, and conducted 
the opening religions exercises. 

Sermon, by Rev. Lemuel Moss, D.D,, President Indiana University, 
"The Christian Element in Education." (See page 207.) 



AFTERNOON SESSION, 3 P.M. 

Gen. Cyrus Bussey, of New Orleans, presided, and spoke. (See 
page 211.) 
Opening Religious Exercises, conducted by Rev. E. H. Stokes, D.D. 

Sermon, by Rev. J. P. Newman, LL.D., of New York, "Religious 
Education the Safeguard of our Nation." (See page 212.) 



THE SURF MEETING AT 6 P.M., 

On the beach in front of the Pavilion, was largely attended, and several 
addresses were made. (See pages 227-230.) 



CLOSING SESSION, 7.45 P.M. 

Hon. John Eaton, United States Commissioner of Education, presided. 

After introductory religious services, Gen. T. J. Morgan, of Potsdam, 
N. Y., delivered an address: "Christian Education a Factor in our 
National Life." (See page 219.) 



244 CHBI8TIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 

Address, by Rev. S. P. Hood, of Beaufort, S. C. 

The closing address of tlie Assembly was made by Hev. A. J. Ktnett, 
D.D. (See page 231.) 

The Chairman called upon Dr. Hartzell for some parting words. 
(See page 232.) 

Dr. Stokes, after speaking words of hearty congratulation, asked the 
vast audience to rise, and by waving of handkerchiefs to express a 
hearty " God bless you " to the speakers and all who had made the As- 
sembly a success. The scene was one never to be forgotten. 

Dr. Stokes pronounced the benediction, and the National Education 
Assembly for 1883 adjourned. 

Heney F. Reddall, Secretary. 

Ocean Grove, New Jersey, August 12, 1883. 



The stenographic reports of the speeches and addresses at this As- 
sembly were made by Mr. Julius Ensign Rockwell, Stenographer of 
the Bureau of Education, Washington, D. C. 

The music at the several sessions of the Assembly was under the di- 
rection of Prof. W. J. KiRKPATEiCK, of Philadelphia. 

The Brass Band, composed of twelve Indian young men from Carlisle 
Indian Training-School, added much to the interest of the sessions of 
Friday night and Saturday by rendering sacred and patriotic music. 



XIII. 

TABULATION 



OF 



ILLITERACY AND EDUCATION 



nr TEE UNITED STATES IN 1880. 



THE following tables are furnished by Hon. John Eaton, United States Com- 
missioner of Education, and Hon. H. R. Waite, Special Statistician of tbe 
Census of 1880. Some of tbem are found in the speech of Hon. H. W. Blaik, United 
States Senator from New Hampshire, delivered in the Senate June 13, 1883. The 
data given on national aid to popular education in foreign lands are from the same* 
sources. 

In these tables are found the principal facts concerning the illiterate masses of 
our country, and what each State and Territory is doing in the work of popular 
education. 

HOW MANY, WHO, AND WHERE ARE OUR ILLITERATES. 

Table Number 1 gives the population ten years of age and upward, and the num- 
ber and per cent, of these ages in each State, who cannot read or write ; also the 
same facts concerning the whole number of whites, the number of native and for- 
eign-born whites, and colored persons. The summaries are as follows : 

Total population in the United States, 50,155,783. 

Total population ten years of age and upward, 36,761,607. 

Number of these ages who cannot read, 4,933,451 ; being 18.4 per cent. 

Number of these ages who cannot write, 6,339,958; being 17 per cent. 

Number of white persons ten years of age and upward, 33,160,400. Of these, 
3,019,008, or 9.4 per cent., cannot write. 

Number of native xohite persons ten years of age and upward, 35,785,789. Of 
these 3,355,460, or 8.7 per cent., cannot write. 

'^umbex ol foreign-born wTiites of same ages, 6,374,611. Of these, 763,630, or 
13 per cent., cannot write. 

Number of colored persons ten years of age and upward, 4,601,307. Of these 
8,330,878, or 70 per cent., cannot write. 



246 CHMISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 

OUR ADULT ILLITERATES. 

TaUe Number 2 shows the number of persons, male and female, twenty-one years 
of age and over in the several States and Territories who cannot write, and how 
many of these are white and how many colored. 

The showing is : Total, 4,204,363; and of these the whites number 2,056,463, 
and colored, 2, 147, 900. The white and colored adults in the nation twenty-one 
years of age and upward who cannot write are about equal in numbers. The 
per cent, is, of course, much larger among the colored because of their smaller 
numbers. 



NUMBER AND LOCATION OF OUR IGNORANT VOTERS. 

Considering that the males and females are about equal in numbers, and deduct- 
ing from the 4,204,363 the Indians and Asiatics, the numler of voters in the nation 
who cannot write fhsk names is about 2,000,000. As there are about 10,000,000 of 
voters in the United States, it follows that every fifth voter in the country cannot 
write his name. The ignorant vote of any Middle, Southern, or Western State is 
enough to control any political issue likely to arise for years. Our ignorant voters 
represent ten of our fifty millions. It can be easily seen by Table No. 2 where 
these ignorant voters are. Nearly three fourths of them are in the sixteen Southern 
States, where are only one third of our population. South Carolina, with a pop- 
ulation of 995,577, has about 117,000 ignorant voters, while New York has less 
than 100,000 in a population of 5,082,871, or more than five times as many. Iowa 
has a population of 1,624,615, and Georgia has a population of 1,542,180, nearly 
the same. And yet Iowa has only 18,886 voters who cannot write, while Georgia 
has 169,505, or almost nine times as many. If the comparison be confined to 
white voters, Georgia has twice as many as Iowa, to say nothing of her 123,659 
colored voters. 



THE NUMBER OF IGNORANT VOTERS AND ILLITERATE MASSES INCREASING. 

Table Number 3 is taken from a speech of ex-President Hayes, delivered in 1882, 
and shows that the illiterate voters of the South are increasing. The increase 
from 1870 to 1880 being 187,671, about equally divided between the races. 

Another fact of great significance is that while, by the census of 1880, there had 
been an increase of three per cent, in the number of our intelligent masses, yet 
there had been a much larger relative increase in our illiterate population. The 
census of 1880 shows that there were 581,814 more people in the country ten years 
of age and over who could not read or write than there were in 1870. The work 
of education is not keeping pace with the increase of our population, to say 
nothing of removing the vast clouds of ignorance which hang over multitudes of 
our older masses. 



ILLITERACY IN OUR CITIES. 

Table Number 4 gives important data in eighty-six cities of the country. In 
these cities are 8,300,081 people, with 2,052,923 of school population. Of these, 
who ought to be in school, 1,302,776 are enrolled, while 750,147 do not attend 



ILLITERA G 7 AND ED UCA TION. 247 

school. This means that not ([uite 63.5 per cent, of the children of school age in 
those cities are enrolled at all in schools, leaving 30. 5 per cent., or over one third, 
to grow up in ignorance. In Chicago 57 per cent., or more than half the children 
of school age, are not enrolled. In Wilmington, North Carolina, ^ per cent, are 
not enrolled. In 34 cities 50 per cent, and upward are not enrolled. 

The facts given in this table are of vast significance. The population, wealth, 
commercial, social, and political power of our cities are all rapidly increasing. If 
one third of the youth, in these great centers continue to grow up in ignorance, 
who can estimate the appalling dangers which the future may bring ? This illiter- 
acy of our cities demands as serious thought and as immediate action as does the 
illiteracy of the South. 



THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES. 

Tcible Nuniber 5 gives a picture of the public and private schools of the country. 
The school population of the nation is 15,303,535. Of these 9,780,773 are enrolled 
in public schools, and 566, 989 in private schools. The average daily attendance 
in our public schools is 5,804,993, being only about one in three of the total school 
population; 4,955,602 of the educable youth of the land are not even enrolled in 
schools. 

The number of teachers in public schools is 280,753, and in private schools 
there are 13,105 instructors. 

By this table it is seen that in proportion as the illiterate masses of a State are 
great, the number of schools is small. To continue the comparison between Iowa 
and Georgia, the former, with its 2.4 per cent, of illiteracy, has 11,084 public 
schools, with 21,598 teachers in them; while Georgia, wdth about the same popu- 
lation, and 49.9 per cent, of illiteracy, has only 5,916 public schools and 6,000 
public-school teachers. This unfavorable comparison for Georgia is slightly re- 
lieved by the fact that there are 48,452 in private schools in that State, as against 
12,724 in private schools in Iowa. 



POPULATION AND PROPERTY IN UNITED STATES. 

I860, 1870, and 1880. 

Table Number 6 gives the population and assessed valuation of the property in 
each State and Territory in 1860, 1870, and 1880. This table is specially valuable 
as indicating the financial capacity of each State. The rule is that in proportion 
as a State or section needs education, it is financially unable to secure it. The. 
Southern States had a property valuation in 1860 of $2,289,029,642, and of this 
$842,927,400 was in slaves. The Negroes were then productive property, being 
taxed. Now they must be educated, and as yet are able to do but little in helping 
to bear the burden of that work. 

Since 1860 the increase of population has been great in every part of the country. 
In some of the New England States the increase has been small, but now^here else 
has the increase been less than 31 per cent., and as a rule it has been very great. 
The South has held its own in this increase, and the Negroes of the nation have 
gone up to 7,000,000. Valuation of property has not kept pace with increase of 
population. Property, in twenty years, has increased 40 per cent. ; while popula- 



348 CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN OOXmCIL. 

tion has increased over 60 per cent. For example, Alabama is worth 73 per cent. 
less than in 1860, and yet has 81 per cent, more of population. Arkansas has 
nearly doubled her population, while in the twenty years her property value has 
gone down nearly one half. So in all the South. The necessities for educational 
facilities have increased enormously ; while the financial capacity of that section 
has greatly decreased. This table affords a powerful argument in favor of national 
aid to common schools. 



TAXATION FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

Talle Nwriber 7 gives the amounts raised by taxation for public schools in each 
State and Territory in 1880. The whole amount raised from State and local taxa- 
tion is $70,371,435. 

Here, again, the rule is that in proportion as schools are needed, judging from 
the number of illiterates, the revenue for schools is small. Comparing Iowa and 
Georgia again, we have this: the former taxes its people $4,337,300 for public 
schools, while the latter taxes itself $471,039 for the same purpose. If, however, 
we remember the property of Georgia as compared with Iowa, the disparity is not 
so great. 

The great reduction in real estate values in the South since the war, as shown 
elsewhere, must be taken into the account in comparing the South with the North. 



PROPOSED DISTRIBUTION OF NATIONAL AID BY SENATOR BLAIR'S BILL. 

Table Number 8 gives the amount each State would receive provided the gen- 
eral government would give $15,000,000 a year for common schools, and distribute 
on the basis of illiteracy. 



INCOME AND EXPENDITURES FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN UNITED STATES. 

1881. 

Table Nuiriber 9 gives a summary of annual income and expenditures in the 
States and Territories for education in 1881. 

The total income was $88,143,088, and about the same amount was expended. 
The estimated value of sites, buildings, and all other school property for 1881 was 
$186,143,453. 

The study of this table reveals an important line of facts, as already indicated. 
Where ignorance most abounds school funds are the smallest. The school income 
of Georgia was $498,533, while that of Iowa was $5,006,034, more than ten times 
as much, with about the same population. 



PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH. 

Table Number 10 gives a comparative view of education in the South in two parts: 
one representing 1880, and one 1881. Both years are given so that a comparison 
of years may be made, and the advance or the opposite be noted. The increase of 
school population among the whites during the year was 54,639, while the increase 
in enrollment was only 19,303, but little more than one third what it ought to 



ILLITEBA CY AND ED UCA TION. 249 



have been, to say notMng of the vast increase demanded to remove, in the near 
future, the appalling illiteracy among the vsrhites of that region. 

The comparison among the Negroes is still more unsatisfactory. The increase 
dming the year in scholars was 135,930, while the increase in enrollment was only 
17,663. That is, but little more than one seventh of the increase of youth among 
the Negroes of the South were enrolled. 

The Southern States expended for both races in school work in 1880, $12,475,- 
044, and in 1881, |13,359,784, being an increase of |884,740. This is more favor- 
able. New York and Michigan have a larger income for public schools than the 
whole South. 

NATIONAL AID TO POPULAR EDUCATION IN EUROPE. 

The data submitted upon popular education in European countries will aid in 
comparing om-selves with others. As Senator Blair says : "The principle is fully 
recognized that when the general welfare demands, individuals and subdivisions 
must submit, if necessary for any cause, to receive compulsory blessings ; coupled 
with which is the duty which implies the right of the whole to provide for the 
protection and safety of all the parts by the utmost exercise of its powers." 

The foreigners who come to our shores have about 14 per cent, of illiterates 
among them, which is about the same grade of intelligence we have in America. 
So that immigration does not add essentially to our national illiteracy. 



2.30 



CERISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 






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CHRISTIAN' EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



Table No. 4. 

Showing the Total Population, School Population, Enrollment, etc., in 86 Cities, (Census of 1880.) 



CITIES. 


1 
% 




a 




£-3 


J1.1 


las,! 




0, S S 




29,132 
7,529 
1.3,138 
34,355 
21,42n 

233,939 
35,629 
29,148 
42,015 
62,882 
42,478 

159,871 
7,630 
9,890 
37,409 
21,891 

502,183 
29,239 
75,056 
26,042 
22,408 
22,234 
16,546 
15,452 
29,720 

123,758 

216,090 
16,836 
19,083 
33,810 

832,313 

362,839 
39,151 
59,475 
58,291 

116,340 
32,016 
46,887 
41,473 
11,814 
55,785 
32,431 

350,518 
30,518 
11,687 
32,630 
13,397 
9,690 

120,722 

136,508 
51,031 
90,758 

566,663 

155,134 

1,206,209 

89,366 

17,850 

255,139 

160,146 
31,647 
38,678 
50,137 
17,377 
78,682 

877,170 

136,389 
43,850 
15,693 

104.857 
49,984 
10,036 
12,892 
9,693 
33,592 
43,330 
16,513 
20,530 
11,365 
12,149 
21,966 
21,656 
63,600 
10,324 

115,587 
15,748 


' l",757 
6,169 
8,108 
4,913 

53.892 
5,700 
6,641 
9,652 

13,897 

27,i43 

1,011 

3,415 

10,500 

9,366 

137,035 

9,670 

26,7«9 

8,096 

3,576 

9,476 

6,257 

2,816 

10,094 

46,587 

56,947 

5,479 

5,974 

10,660 

86,961 

57,703 

6,865 

9,121 

10,988 

39,467 

9,784 

12,806 

' 'i,m 

11,325 

8,H08 

106,372 

7381 

2,350 

4,774 

2,072 

2,251 

41,226 

41,935 

13,672 

.33,411 

181,083 

56,600 

395,000 

37,1100 

4,921 

87,618 

49,236 

14,662 

11,660 

14.898 

4,669 

■l9,866 
3,419 
19,108 
12,727 

' S,66i 
2,100 
9,011 

12,460 
2,746 
3,022 

' 6,695 
7,417 

21,5;16 
3,517 

37.742 
5,874 


4,659 

8S2 

2,503 

5,99b 

3,895 

38,321 

3,210 

5,229 

7,612 

11,897 

7,04:5 

13,728 

804 

1,168 

4,100 

4,027 

59,562 

4,761 

13,936 

4,138 

2,322 

3,686 

3,060 

1,935 

3,286 

19,990 

17,886 

3,120 

3,558 

6,797 

48,066 

59,768 

4,81)0 

12,211 

11,452 

13,719 

5,727 

6,142 

4,338 

1,196 

5,259 

3820 

55,780 

3,716 

1,880 

4,330 

2,526 

1,891 

22,776 

19,778 

7,901 

14,049 

96,663 

18,606 

270,176 

13,869 

866 

36,121 

24,262 

7,902 

6,114 

7,615 

2,650 

11,610 

105,541 

26,937 

10,174 

2,580 

13,993 

7,284 

"iiss 

1,509 
4,105 
6,098 
l,7i6 
1,584 
1,566 
2.395 
1,613 
1,985 
5,821 
1,939 
17,085 
2.217 


4,014 

717 

1,655 

5,067 

28,1.50 
1,953 
3,529 
4,886 
7,931 
4,472 

12,508 

'828 
2,609 

42,375 

3,386 

8,925 

2,975 

1,562 

2,555 

2,154 

1,607 

2,485 

13,498 

15,190 

2,438 

2.061 

4,347 

29,961 

46,130 

4,232 

6,045 

7,913 

10,818 

8,590 

4,248 

3,030 

3,140 
2,579 
36,449 

1.436 
2,818 
1,H30 

12,905 
11,100 
4.759 
9,175 
52,677 
14,553 
132,720 
8,250 

27,279 
16,807 
5,953 
4.527 
4,739 
1,956 
8,287 
94,145 
17,387 
6,861 
1,808 
9,630 

1,382 
930 
2,389 
4,299 
1,172 
934 

I'.ii? 

1,494 
4,778 
1,745 
11,149 
2,017 


125 

14 

33 

129 

75 

686 

65 

91 

140 

2:30 

113 

259 

17 

17 

68 

32 

896 

76 

219 

78 

41 

71 

34 

30 

60 

325 

407 

71 

76 

128 

822 

1,201 

118 

160 

218 

250 

106 

1211 

96 

21 

62 

58 

1,044 

57 

46 

86 

52 

35 

328 

270 

142 

229 

1.315 

439 

8,357 

230 

671 
596 
149 
125 
125 

46 
202 
2,295 
526 
169 

53 
289 

91 


172 

180 
206 
200 
211 
190 
SIO 
201 
200 
2()7 
208 
176 
240 
200 
183 
200 
200 
200 
200 
190 
200 
180 
180 
198 
215 
208 
2(l4 

mi4 

20j 
186 
206 
200 

200 
200 
200 
200 
200 

200 
2(10 
200 
200 
180 
190 
180 
200 
204 
210 
200 
210 
205 
201 
204 
200 

225 
196 
200 

200 
200 
193 
207 

220 
19a 

i97 


"875 
8,666 
2,112 
1,048 
15,572 
2,490 
1,412 
2,040 
2.000 

11,414 

207 
2,247 
6,400 
5,389 

77,473 
4,409 

11,853 
3,958 
1.254 
6,790 
3,197 
881 
6,809 

26,597 

39,061 
2,859 
2,416 
3,868 

38,895 
2,065 
2,065 
3,090 
468 

23,748 
4,057 
6,664 

1,804 

6,066 

5,088 

50,592 

8.665 

470 

424 

454 

360 

18,450 

22,457 

5,571 

21.362 

84,720 

37,394 

114,'<24 

23.131 

4,055 

51,497 

24,994 

6,760 

5,546 

7,283 

2,019 

9,626 

839 

5,113 

5,443 

'876 
591 
4,906 
6,862 
990 
1,438 

5,682 

5.432 
15,715 

1.578 
20,657 

3,637 


50 
41 
74 
79 
71 
56 
79 
79 
86 

58 
79 
34 
39 
43 
48 
49 
52 
57 
65 
39 
49 
68 
32 
43 
31 
55 
60 
64 
55 
*103 
70 
*134 
*104 
40 
58 
48 

39 
46 
43 
52 
50 
80 
91 
*121 
62 
55 
46 
58 
40 
5:3 
33 
70 
37 
18 
41 
^ 49 
64 
52 
51 
57 

41 

75 
73 
57 

71 
72 
43 
49 
64 
52 

24 
27 
27 
55 
45 
38 






50 




53 




26 




21 


San Francisco, California 


29 
44 




21 




21 




14 


Wilminfrton, Delaware .... 

Georgetovyn and VVashington, D. C... 


42 
21 




66 




61 




57 




57 




51 




48 




43 




3S 




61 




51 




33 




68 




57 




69 




45 




40 




36 




45 








30 












60 




42 


Minneapolis, iNIinnesota 


52 








61 




54 




57 




41 




50 


Dover, New Hampshire 


20 




9 






Portsmouth, New Hampshire 


38 


Jersey Citv, New Jersey 


45 




54 


Paterson, New Jersey 


42 


.Albany, New York 


60 


Brooklyn, New York 


47 


Buffalo, New York 


67 


New York, New York 


30 


Rochester, New York 


63 


Wilmington, North Carolina 


82 


Cincinnati, Ohio 


59 


Cleveland, Ohio 


51 


Columbus, Ohio 


46 




48 


Toledo, Ohio 


49 


Portland, Oregon 


43 










Pittsburg, Pennsylvania 






49 


Newport, Rhode Island 

I'rovideuce, Rhode Island 


25 

27 




43 


Columbia, South Carolina 




Chattanooga, Tennessee 


80 180 
26 200 

63 151 
96 IMO 
28 160 
22 205 
82 ... 

64 ... 
26 210 
23' 174 

129, 198 
84' 185 

239 ... 
53 ... 


29 




28 


Memphis, Tennessee 


55 




51 






San Antonio, Texas 


48 


Burlington, Vermont 




Rutland, Vermont 






76 


Petersljurg, Virginia 

liichmond, Virginia 


73 
73 


Madison, Wisconsin 


45 




55 




62 








8,300,081 


2,052,923 


U02,776 


858,533 


21,672l ... 


750,147 







* More thnn the school population. This is due to the fact that they are allowed to attend school after the age established by law. 
Average attendance about two thirds of enrollment or one third of population of school age. 
TUirty-four cities, 60 per cent, and upward aot enrolled at all. 



ILLITERACY AND EDUCATION. 



253 



Table >fo. 5. 

Public School Statistics of the United States in 1880, -with Number of Teachers and Pupils 

in Private Schools. 



I ijs 



^•S > 

C 3 « 



Alabama . . . 
Arkansas... 
California . . 
Colorado . . . 
Connecticut 
Delaware. . . 

Florida 

Georgia — 

EUnois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas 

Kentucky. . . 
Louisiana . . 

Maine 

Maryland. . . 

Mass 

Michigan... 
Minnesota.. 
Mississippi . 

Missouri 

Nebraska.. . 

Nevada 

N.Hampsh'e 
New Jersey. 
New York . . 
N. Carolina. 

Ohio 

Oregon 

Penn'a 

Rhode Isl'd. 
S. Carolina. 
Tennessee . . 

Texas 

Vermont . . . 
Virginia — 
W.Virginia. 
Wisconsin . 

Arizona 

Dakota 

Dist. of Col. 

Idaho 

Indiana — 
Montana . . . 
New Mexico 

Utah 

Washingt'n. 
Wyoming . . 

Total... 



7-21 
6-21 
5-1' 
5-21 
4-16 
6-21 
4-21 
6-18 
6-21 
6-21 
5-21 
5-21 
a6-20 
6-18 
4-21 
5-20 
5-15 
5-20 
5-22 
5-21 
&-20 
5-21 
66-18 
55-21 
5-18 
5-21 
6-21 
6-21 
4-20 
6-21 
5-15 
6-16 
6-21 
8-14 
5-20 
5-21 
6-21 
4-20 
6-21 
5-21 
6-17 
5-21 

4^21 
C7-18 

6-18 
ft5-21 
57-21 



388,003 

247,547 

215,978 

35,566 

140,235 

85,459 

88,677 

b433,444 

1,010,851 

703,558 

586,556 

340,647 

545,161 

273,845 

214,656 

d276,120 

307,321 

506,221 

e271,428 

426,689 

723,484 

142,348 

610,295 

b/72,102 

330,6S5 

1,641,173 

459,334 

bl,043,320 

59 273 

gl,200,'o00 

52,273 

7l228,128 

544,862 

230,527 

e92,831 

555,807 

210,113 

483,829 

7,148 

12,030 

43,558 



{11,444 

7,070 

d29,312 

40,672 

b24,233 



179,460 

70,97; 
158,765 

22,119 
119,694 

27,823 

39,315 
236,533 
704,041 
511,283 
426,057 
231,434 
265,581 

68,440 
149,827 
162,431 
306,777 
362,566 
180,248 
236,704 
476,376 

92,549 

fo7,590 
Z365,048 
204,961 
1,031,593 
225,606 
747,138 

37,5.33 
937,310 

44,780 
134,072 
290,141 
186.786 

75,238 

220,736 

142,850 

299,258 

4,212 

8,042 

26,439 
6,7.58 

j6,098 
2,506 

c5,151 

24,326 
614,032 

62,090 



117,978 



80.0 



100,966 

12,618 

fc78,421 



27,046 
145,190 
431,638 
321,659 
259,a36 
137,667 
/193,87'4 

44,626 
103,113 

85,778 

2.33,127 

/213,898 

/117,161 

156,761 

/219,1.32 

/60,156 

65,108 
648,910 
115,194 
573,089 
147,802 
476,279 

27,435 
601,627 

29,065 



191,461 



15,303,535 9,780,773 5,804,993 



48,606 
128,404 
91,704 
197,510 
2,847 
3,170 
20,637 



53,944 
2,506 



17,178 
69,585 
61,287 



146 
689, 
179, 
1158. 



150. 
136. 
148. 
107 
102. 
118. 
120. 
m210. 
177. 
141. 
94, 

6100! 
109, 

6i6i; 

192. 
179. 

54. 
150. 

80. 

147. 

nl84. 

77. 

68. 
073. 
125. 
113. 

99. 
162. 
109. 

88. 
193. 



617 17 
17 80 
11 01 

8 12 

i'99 

9 61 
7 96 

11 25 

7 85 
3 85 

66 74 
6 53 

8 64 
/14 93 

68 11 

68 42 

2 70 

12'29 



cl32 
128 
687 



14 SI 



68 15 



4,594 
1,827 
2,803 

l',636 
561 

1,131 
65,916 
14,964 

9,383 
11,084 

5,233 

l',494 

2,360 
5,.570 
6,695 
J34,064 
65,367 
8,641 
2,922 

2,528 

p20',566 

5,503 

12,043 

6865 

618,386 

926 

2,973 

5,522 

6,127 

2,616 

4,854 

63,725 

5,984 



p325 
1.55 
212 
153 
Cl38 
6373 
340 



4,615 

1,827 

3,.595 

678 

p3,100 

594 

1,095 

6,000 

22,255 

13,578 

21,598 
7,780 
6,764 
2,025 
6,934 
3,125 
8,595 

13,949 
5,215 
5,569 

10,447 
4,100 
6184 

63,583 
3,477 

30,730 
4,1.30 

23,684 
1,314 

21,375 
1,295 
3,171 
5,594 
4,361 
4,326 
4,873 
4,1.34 

10,115 

101 

266 

433 

rl60 

W96 

161 

Cl38 

6373 

340 



14,953 



13,900 



1,680 

1,49'" 

t592 

474 

979 

«24'r 



703 



572 



292 
212 

208 

l',665 



804 



c81 
631 



48,452 
60,440 
tl2,112 
12,724 
66,205 

m4,464 



26,289 
13,854 



6S190,186 
2,104,465 

2,b2V,346 



9,049,302 
9,065,255 

ll,8lK5i9 
1,755,682 
1,130,867 



3,-340,949 
15,000,000 



/20,754,810 



63,066 

43,5.30 

WJ139,476 



188,701 282,753 13.105 



28,650 

3,744 

1J24,066 

6,676 

4l',668 



25,692 
25,938 



a:5,000 



cl,259 
' 6451 



2,516,785 
i/53i',555 

* 266,950 

?i2,512,566 
63,385,571 

1,468,765 

423,989 

2,995,112 

60,383 



566,9891 



a. For whites; for colored, 6-16. 


n. In evening schools, 61, 


b. In 1879. 


O. In the counties. 


C. In 1875. 


p, Approxiiimtely. 


d. Census of 1870. 


r. Number necessary to supply the schools. 


e. In 1818. 


t. Private schools in public buildings. 


/. Estimated. 


U. In 1879; exclusive of New Orlenns private schools. 


g. In 1873, 


V. In 1879; exclusive of Philadelphia. 


ft. In 1877. 


to. In academies and privnte schools. 


i. In the Cheroltee, Choctaw, and Creek NstioM. 


X. Estimated average number of pupils. 


J. In the five civilized tribes. 


y. Exclusive of 1,000,000 acres of swamp land made subject to 


k. For the winter. 


entry sale by last Legislature. 


I. In white schools only. 


• As far OS reported by State superintendents. 


m. In cities -, 176 in coonties. 





254 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



.s 






CM 






r-*1?3 -^00 



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ILLITERACY AND EDUCATION. 



25.J 



Table N'o. V. 

Amount raised by taxation for support of public pchools in each State and Territory during the 

year 1S80. 



1. Alabama 

2. Arkansas 

3. California 

4. Colorado 

5. Connecticut.. 

6. Delaware 

7. Florida 

8. Georgia 

9. Illinois 

10. Indiana 

11. Iowa 

12. Kansas 

13. Kentucky . . . . 

14. Louisiana . . . 

15. Maine 

16. Maryland 

17. Massachus'ts. 

18. Mictiigan 

19. Minnesota 

20. Mississippi . . . 

21. Missouri 

22. Nebraska 

23. Nevada 

34. N.Hampshire. 

25. New Jersey. . . 

26. New York.... 



AMOUNT BECEITBD FBOH TAXATION. 



$130,000 
1,318,209 
' 210,353 



($104 
e345,790 
1,000.000 
/1 ,456,834 



535,354 
356.000 
224,5651 
491,406 

'■1379,7.58 
257,689 



73,808 



1,017,785 
2,750,000 



a$120,000 

77,47 
1,393,572 
e336,333 
1,066,314 
rtl51,045 
,530) 

125,239 

5,735,478 

/2,168,302 

4,227,300 

1,276,786 

0382,038 

/l94,000 

596.295 

721,571 

4,372,286 

2,074,073 

1,073,837 

334,769 

2,163,330 

713,155 



724,413 
6,925,993 



f544,716 
1,742,198 
9,675,992 



27. N.Carolina. 

28. Ohio 

29. Orecon 

30. Penn'a . . . . 

31. Rhode Isl'd 

32. S.Carolina. 

33. Tennessee . 

34. Texas 

35. Vermont... 

36. Virginia . . . 

37. W.Virginia 

38. Wisconsin . 

39. Arizona 

40. Dakota 

41. Dist.ofCol. 

42. Idaho 

43. Indian Ter. 

44. Montana... 

45. N. Mexico.. 

46. Utah 

47. Washing'n. 

48. Wyoming.. 



Total . 



AMOCNT RnCEIVED FROM TAXATION, 



($314,719) 



$1,548,20' 
133,477 



80,800 



^678,603 
113,173 
596,516 
212,753 
*25,000 



m64,643 



63,041 
/102,201 



$5,155,870 
79,562 
7,040,116 

414,8.5; 



304,318 

605,4.59 

490,432 

2,198,581 



123,043 
474,556 
48,017 



5,256 



43,.337 
/3,319 

/7,056 



(419,249) 
$14,287,5701 $53,913,986 



$314,719 

6,714,080 
213,089 

7,046,116 
495,652 
440,116 
j608,773 

7f 678,601 
417,490 

1,261,975 
703,185 

2,223,581 
f67,028 
123,643 
474,556 
48,017 



69,899 

106,378 

/105,.520 

/7,0£6 



a. Prom poll tax. 

o. State apportionment, which liere probably includes 
the income of the State School Fund for IS'SO, and so 
much of the ordinary State revenue as may be set apart 
for the purpose by the Legislature. 

c. From counl_F and district tax, fines, etc. 

d. This amount raised for white schools. 

e. This includes rental of State Railroad, ($150,000.) 
/ In 1879. 

g. Includes tax on billiards and dogs. 
h. Estimated. 



i. From township tax. 

;}. Includes income from permanent fund. 

7i'. State appropriation. 

I. Total income as reported for ISSO, the greater part 
of which comes from Territorial, county, and district 
taxes. 

m. From county tax. 

n. Includes $l,7.i0,6.30 reported as derived from tax- 
ation and given in the column of totals, but not appear- 
infr in the first two columns. 

* Special for building purposes. 



Table :No. 8. 

Showing how much each State and Territory would receive on the basis of Illiteracy, should 
Congress appropriate $15,000,000. 



STATES AND TERRITORIES. 



Alabama 

Arizona 

Arkansas 

California 

Colorado 

Connecticut 

Dakota 

Delaware 

District of Columbia 

Florida 

Georgia 

Idaho 

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas 

Kentucky 

Louisiana 

Maine 

Maryland 

Massachusetts 

Michigan 

Minnesota 

Mississippi 

Missouri 



Proportion of 

$15,000,000 to 

each State. 



,137,869 

16,740 

466,735 

147,983 

28,-373 

63,983 

9,424 

51,514 

65,613 

213,887 

,360,596 

4,215 

294,880 

213,244 

85,644 

77,682 

786,434 

905,612 

55,379 

339,284 

230,384 

143,503 

62,598 

961,354 

422,839 



STATES AND TERRrTOEIES. 



Montana 

Nebraska 

Nevada 

New Hampshire 

New Jersey 

New Mexico 

New York 

North Carolina. . 

Ohio 

Oregon 

Pennsylvania . . . 

Rliode Island 

South Carolina.. 

Tennessee 

Texas 

Utah 

Vermont 

Virginia 

Wa.shington 

West Virginia... 

Wisconsin 

Wyoming 

Total . . . . 



Proportion of 

$15,000,000 to 

each State. 



$4,660 38 

23,850 18 

11,279 34 

36,497 17 

119,208 26 

161,419 72 

507,589 75 

,120,692 94 

264,2.52 68 

16,375 30 

44,5.136 a5 

53,170 98 

980,141 88 

,201,296 71 

780,455 20 

14,776 15 

39,576 68 

,098,067 77 

9,719 79 

1138,516 89 

117,858 88 

1,300 04 



$15,000,000 00 



256 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 



Table No- 9. 

Summary of Annual Income and Expenditures in States and Territories. 



STATES AND TEBBITOBIES. 



Alabama 

Arkansas 

California 

Colorado 

Connecticut 

Delaware 

Florida 

Georgia 

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas 

Kentucky 

Louisiana 

Maine 

Maryland 

Massachusetts 

Michigan 

Minnesota 

Mississippi 

Missouri 

Nebraska 

Nevada 

New Hampshire 

New Jersey 

New York 

North Carolina 

Ohio 

Oregon 

Pennsylvania 

Khode Island 

South Carolina 

Tennessee 

Texas 

Vermont 

Virginia 

West Virginia 

Wisconsin 

Arizona 

Dakota 

District of Columbia 

Idaho 

Montana 

New Mexico 

Utah 

Washington 

Wyoming 

Indian : 

Cherokees 

Chickasaws 

Choctaws 

Creeks 

Seminoles 

Total 



$397,479 
710,462 

3,680,161 
708,516 

1,482,036 

147,360 

Cl39,710 

498,533 

7,922,469 

4,480,306 

5,006,034 

1,740,593 

1,194,358 
486,790 

1,089,414 

1,608,274 
r4,851,507 

3,645,328 

1,679,397 

716,343 

C4,030,860 

1,330,449 
138,640 
586,139 

1,914,447 

10,895,765 

698,773 

8,129,326 
323,201 

8,798,734 
582,965 
452,965 
706,152 
c891,235 
454,833 

1,335,984 
855,466 

3,178,819 
58,768 

/363,000 
555,044 
54,609 
94,551 
W33,171 
198,876 
137,609 
m36,161 

52,300 
33,580 
31,700 
26,900 
7,500 



ANNUAL EXPENDITURE. 



$39,505 
299,976 



131,383 



837,356 
616,450 
870,334 
365,159 

mi3,760 

95,347 

0174,684 

803,441 

730,611 

238,530 

68,327 

Cl37,894 

221,965 

pstll,510 



172,943 

1,677,673 

27,335 

843,696 

45,193 

ml,207,011 

50,834 

17,334 

58,852 

027,565 

p32,613 

137,339 

102,858 

274,846 



120,533 
2,151 



54,859 
1)14,593 



$11,884 
Z)48,339 



30,000 
c2,300 
C8,031 



072,977 



25,309 



19,667 

28,370 

p40,138 

159,314 



16,600 
13,607 



29,443 



14,373 

38,557 

114,600 

6,394 

154,805 

8,575 

Oll3,000 

10,376 

18,445 

13,076 

Cl3,648 



44,927 

011,725 

61,075 



m8,616 
10,860 



3,000 



1)2,883 



$384,769 
2,346,056 



1,025,323 

Cl38,819 

c97,115 



M,733,349 

/c3,057,110 

J3,046,716 

1,167,620 

'374, i37 

q965,697 

1,162,439 

04,180,714 

12,114,567 

993,997 

644,353 

03,313,637 

627,717 

S59,194 

408,554 

1,510,830 

7,775,505 

342,212 

5,151,448 

234,818 

4,677,017 

408,993 

309,855 

529,618 

C674.869 

366,448 

833,310 

539,648 

1,618,383 



295,668 
38,174 
52,781 
w28,002 
113,768 
1)94,019 
m25,894 



a$14,037 
401,573 



299,986 

c64,472 

C3,557 



2,335,832 
855,194 

1,218,769 
419,409 

34,930 



227,329 

425,713 

573,055 

217,375 

32,473 

d678,830 

285,978 

sl2,169 

154,095 

192,118 

1,355,634 

33,838 

1,983,673 

29,746 

1,998,677 

79,734 



36,463 
c38,264 
43,117 
94,763 
107,019 
334,999 



100,251 
4,515 



m971 
30,637 
1)2,885 
W2,610 



$410,690 

388,412 

3,047,605 

557,151 

1,476,691 

ert307,281 

c/1 14,895 

498,533 

17,858,414 

4,528,7'54 

5,129,819 

1,976,39' 

1,248,534 

441,484 

1,089.414 

1,604,580 

/5,776,543 

3,418,333 

1,466,493 

757,758 

c/3,153,178 

1,165,103 

140,419 

577,033 

1,914,447 

16,923,402 

409,659 

8,133,622 

318,331 

7,994,705 

549,937 

345,634 

638,009 

C758,346 

/447,253 

1,100,239 

761,250 

2,279,103 

44,638 

314,484 

537,312 

44,840 

55,781 

1(28,973 

199.264 

11114,379 

w28,504 

53,300 
33,440 
31,700 
26,900 
7,500 



Sis 



$285,976 
283,125 

6,998,825 
977,313 



6450,000 
Cl32,729 



jl6,956,310 
12,024,180 
9,533,493 
4,884,386 
2,395,752 
m700,006 
3,026,395 



10,500,000 
3,715,769 



c7,353,401 

2,054,403 

260,191 

2,113,857 

6,275,061 

31,091,630 

220,442 

23,103,983 

657,469 

26,605,-321 

1,954,444 

435,289 

868,713 



1,199,.333 
1,753,144 
5,523,657 
121,318 
t532,267 
1,326,888 



140,250 
Ml3,500 

415,186 
1)220,405 
lt40,500 



$88,142,088 



$10,502,036 



1,151,804 



$55,291,022 



$14,603,659 



,111,442 



$186,143,453 



a. Includes expenditure of $13,500 for normal schools. 
6. Paid ont of tlie general fund for counties and not included in 
State expenditure. 
C. In 13S0. 

d. Includes $1,600 expended for colored schools outside of Wil- 
mington. 

e. For white schools only. 
/. Items not fully reported. 

g. Salaries of county superintendents, 
A. Includes salaries of superintendents other than county. 
i. Exclusive of appropriations for normal schools and expense of 
State superintendency. 
/. Exclusive of the value of nonnal-echool property. 



k. Total amount expended from tuition revenue. 
I. Includes salaries of superintendents. 
m. For rent, buildings, etc. 
n. In 1878. 

o. Includfls miscellaneous expenditure. 
p. Includes expenditure for repairs. 
q. Supervision and office expenses. 

7*. Exclusive of receipts for school baildings, permfilieDt ilfl- 
provements, and ordinary repairs. 
S. Storey Coxuity not reporting these items. 
t. Value of school-houses only. 
M. United States Census of 1880. 
V. In 1819. 



ILLITERACY AND EDUCATION. 



257 



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258 CERISTIAIT EDUCATORS IN GOUNGIL. 



NATIONAL AID TO POPULAR EDUCATION IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. 

1. FRANCE. 

The population of France is 36,905,T88. The liberality of the government of the French 
Republic in providing for the education of the masses is witliout precedent in its history. 
At the close of the Franco-Prussian War, in 1871, popular education was in a backward 
state. According to the census of 1872 the total population was 36,102,921. Of this num- 
ber 13,324,801, or 36.9 per cent., (including 3,540,101 children under six years of age,) were 
luiable to read or write; 3,772,603, or 10.5 percent., could read only; and 19,005,517, or 
52.6 per cent., could read and write. 

This lamentable condition of affairs was due to optional attendance at school, and to the 
neglect on the part of the government to provide ample accommodation for a school popu- 
lation of nearly 6,000,000. 

Many communes were too poor, and some were unwilling, to establish new schools or 
enlarge the existing ones. After fome delay a law was passed, March 28, 1882, making 
education obligatory for all children between the ages of six and thirteen, and authorizing 
poor communes to apply for government aid whenever their means are not sufficient to es- 
tablish and maintain public schools. The government, however, does not always wait for 
departments or communes to apply for aid; it invites them to applj'-, and assures them of 
hearty co-operation. Letters were sent on the 3d of AprU, 1882, by the Minister of Public 
Instruction to the prefects of the departments of Morbihan and Vendee (on the western 
coast of France) on the condition of education in these two very backward districts. 

In Morbihan, 60 per cent, of the conscripts for the army, and the same proportion of 
persons who present themselves at the mairies (city halls) for marriages, cannot read or 
write. A number of communes have already voted sums amounting to 500,000 francs for 
the purpose of increasing ihe number of schools, and the Minister of Public Instruction now 
offers them a further subsidy of 1,000,000 francs for the same purpose. 

In Vendee, owing to similar causes, there also prevails a lamentable state of ignorance. 
Here 40 per cent, of the conscripts cannot read or write. In order to attend school 
hundreds of children would have to walk daily from eight to ten miles. The minister offers 
the department a subsidy of 600,000 francs for the purpose of increasing the number of 
schools. 

Government aid to primary education. In 1860 the government aid to primary education 
amounted to 5,424,036 francs; in 1870, (under the empire,) 9,817,513 francs; in 1877, 
(under the republic,) 22,035,760 francs. In 1882 the government aid will be about 50,000,- 
000 francs, in order to enable all the communes to enforce the obligatory school law. In 
addition to the above amounts the departments spend this year 25,000,000 francs, and the 
communes 60,000,000 francs, for primary education. During tlie two weeks from April 15 
to April 30, 1882, the government has spent 1,244,835 francs for new school-houses. The 
total amount spent by the government alone in 1881-82 for aU phases of instructioa 
amounts to 114,353,941 francs, or $22,717,880. 

2. BELGIUM. 

The following table shows the government grants to education from 1831 to 1882 : 

Years. Francs. 

1831 217,000 

1843 466,000 

1845 711,000 

1852 1,230,000 

1857 1,689,000 



ILLITEEACT AND EDUCATION. 259 



1864 3,707,000 

1870 6,425,000 

1878 11,500,000 • 

1882 20,400,000 

The population of Belgium is 5,40:5.006. 

In 1830, when Belguun separated from Holland, there were only 1,146 public primarr 
schools. In 1875. there were 4,152 public primary schools and 2,615 adult schools. In 
1847 41.06 per cent, of the conscripts were illiterate; in 1850, 35.35 per cent., and in 1878, 
only 19.59 per cent. 

3. ITALY. 

Italy has a population of 28,209.020, and a school population (6-12) of 4,527,582. Of 
this number 2,057,977 attend scnool, against 1,604,978 in 1870. The number of public 
elementary schools has ari.sen from 32,782 in 1870 to 41,108 in 1879. The annual grant 
10 these sciiools in 1882 was 31,000,000 lire, ($6,200,000.) Tlie 7,422 private elemetiiary 
schools receive no state aid. In 1878 the government grant was 15,000,000 lire ($3,000.- 
000); in 1876, 20,000,000 lire ($4,000,000); and in 1878, 24,000,000 lire ($4,800,000.) This 
shows an increase of 16,000,000 lire, or $3,200,000, siiice 1873. 

The above grants are made in addition to large buildings and gardens given for educa- 
tional purposes in nearly every city aud town of the kingdom. 

According to the census of 1861, out of a population of 21,777,334 there were 16,999,701 
who could neither read nor write — 7,889,238 males and 9,110,463 females. 

In 1871, out of a population of 26,801,154 there were 19,533,792 who could neither read 
nor write. 

The present Minister of Public Instruction has taken energetic steps to provide accom- 
modatidus for all the children of school age, and to enforce the law which makes attendance 
at school obligatory for all children between the ages of six aud twelve. 

4. ENGLAND. 

Tlie annual parliamentary grants to elementary schools in England and "Wales was: In 
1840, £30.000; in 1850, £180,110; in 1858, £668,873; in 1862, £774,743 ; in 1863, £721,- 
386:' ifl 1866,'£649.006; in 1867, £682,201 ; in 1868, £680,429; in 1869, £840,711 ; in 
1870, £914,721; in 1873, £1.313,078; in 1875, £1,566,271; in 1877, £2,127,730; in 1879, 
£2,733,404; in 1882, £2,749,863. 

The number of schools has risen from 10,751 in 1872 to 17,614 in 1880 ; the number of 
seats from 2,397,745 in 1872 to 4.240.753 in 1880; and the average number of children in 
attendance from 1.445.326 in 1872 to 2,750,916 in 1880. 

The population of England and Wales is 25,968,286. 

5. SCOTLAND. 

Population, 3.734.370. The parliamentary grant to elementary schools amounts to 
£468,512 for 1882-83. The number of elementary schools has increased from 1,962 in 
1872 to 3,056 in 1880: the number of seats from 267,412 in 1872 to 602,054 in 1880, and 
the number of children in average attendance from 206,090 in 1872 to 404,618 in 1880. 

6. IRELAND. 

Population, 5.159.839. Number of elementary schools, 7,522. Number of pupils, 1,011, - 
995. The parliamentary grants for popular education in Ireland amounted to a total of 
£2.948,669 in tlie ten years 1860-69; in 1868 it was £360,195; in 1872, £430,390, and in 
1882-83 it amounts to £729,868. 



360 CHRISTIAN EDUCATORS IN COUNCIL. 

1. PRUSSIii . 

Population, 27,251,067. The government expenditure for education amounts to $11,- 
458,856 in 1882, against $10,000,000 in 1881. As nearly all tiie Pussian schools derive 
income from endowments, the government grants are chiefly devoted to the establishment 
of new schools and the improvement of old ones. 

8. RUSSIA. 

Russia, with a population of 78,500,000 and a school population of 15,000,000, has only 
28,357 elementary schools and 1,213,325 pupils. The annual government grant to all 
grades of schools amounts to $9,000,000. Of this amount only $475,000 is devoted to 
elementary education. The finances of Russia exhibit large annual deficits, caused partly 
by an enormous expenditure for war, and partly by the construction of railways. Ac- 
cording to official returns, the total war outlay incurred by Russia during the four years 
1876-79 amounted to $728,984,635. 

The mass of the population of Russia is as yet without education. In 1860 only two out 
of every hundred recruits levied for the army were able to read and write, but the propor- 
tion had largely increased in 1870, when eleven out of every one hundred were found to be 
possessed of these elenaents of knowledge. 

9. AUSTRIA. 

Education until recently was in a backward state in Austria, the bulk of the agricultural 
population, constituting two thirds of the empire, being almost entirely illiterate. During 
the last twelve years, however, the government has made vigorous efforts to bring about an 
improvement by founding new schools at the expense of the state wherever the con- 
veniences were too poor. A law was passed in 1868 making education obhgatory for all 
children between the ages of six and fourteen. 

The government expenditure for public education has increased from $2,300,000 in 1870 
to $6,500,000 in 1881. 

10. BRITISH EMPIRE. 

As illustrating the educational impulse moving the whole British Empire, the follow data 
of schools in the province of Ontario is given : 

The population of Ontario is 1,913,460, and the school population, 489,924. 

In 1844 there were in the province 2,505 schools, with 96,756 pupils; in 1875, 5,058 
schools, with 494,065 pupils, and in 1880, 5,245 schools, with 496,855 pupils. The total 
expenses for education were $275,000 in 1844, $2,297,604 in 1871, $3,258,125 in 1873, 
$3,433,210 in 1878, and $3,414,267 in 1880. 



GENERAL INDEX. 



A. 

Ability of Brigham Young, 131. 

Academies in the South in 1865, 160. 

Actual strength of M. E. Chiu'ch m the South, 184. 

Addresses by : 

Gen. S. C. Armstrong, 187. 

Hon. H. W. Blair, 41. 

Rev. John Braden, D.D., 178. 

Rev. L. B. Caldwell, Ph.D., 31. 

Rev. J. P. Campbell, D.D., 65. 

H. K. Carroll, Esq., 106. 

Prof. J. M. Covner, 136. 

Prof. S. B. Darnell, B.D., 62. 

Rev. W. F. Dickerson, D.D., 30. 

Robert R. Dohertv, Esq., 21. 

Hon. John Eaton, LL.D., 47. 

Rev. J. W. Hamilton, 58. 

Rev. J. C. Hartzell, D.D., 183. 

Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D., 118. 

Rev. Herrick Johnson, D.D., 18. 

Rev. I. W. Joyce, D.D., 227. 

Rev. Henry Kendall, D.D., 130. 

Rev. C. H. Kidder, 105. 

Rev. A. J. Kynett, D.D., 129, 231. 

Rev. C. K. Marshall, D.D., 77. 

Gen. T. J. Morgan, 219. 

Hon. B. Peters, 18. 

Capt. H. R. Pratt, 114. 

Rev. J. C. Price, A.M., 72. 

Mrs. A. S. Quinton, 102. 

Rev. R. S. Rust, D.D., 197. 

Prof. Saulsbury, 173. 

Rev. E. H. Stokes, D.D., 237. 

Rev. B. T. Tanner, D.D., 56. 

Hon. Albion W. Tourgee, 25. 

Rev. J. M. Walden. LL.D., 223. 

Rev. Wm. Hayes Ward, D.D., 67. 
Addi'ess of Welcome to Northern Teachers and 

Missionaries, 16T. 
Adult illiterates, our, 245. 
Africa, dense ignorance of, 14. 

needs Negro artisans, 78. 

to be civilized and christianized by Negroes, 78. 
African slavery. 55. 
Alabama, illiteracy in, 33. 
Alabama Normal School, 196. 
Alaska, 52. 

Alaska, the Indian tribes of, 118. 
Aleuts, the, of Alaska, 121. 
Allen, Rev. R. H., D.D., paper by, 188. 
Amalgamation of the races a certainty, 61. 
Ambulatory schools, 11. 
America in the Negro, 71. 
America, the Negro in, 55. 
America the theater of action for all peoples, 30. 
America the ultimate home of the Negro, 59. 
American Baptist Home Mission Society, 195. 
American Education, Christ in, 207. 
American Independence, War for, 58. 
American Indian Problem, the, 91. 
American Missionary Association, history of the 

educational work of the, 174. 
American Mormon Problem, the, 129. 
American Negro, the, 62. 
Ante-bellum education in the South, 157. 
Antonelli, Cardinal, and popular education, 216. 
Argentina, education in, 14. 
Arkansas, illiteracy in, 33. 

Armstrong, Gen. S. C, Responsive Address by, 187. 
Arthur, Pre.sident, 45. 
Articles of Confederation, the, 54. 
Assassin, the, in the U. S., 53. 
Assembly, the, of 1882, 233. 
Assimilation in America, the Negro and his, 53. 
Assimilation, not Separation, of the Negro race, 65. 
Assimilation the right of the American Negro, 66. 
Athenian culture, 214. 
Atlanta University, 177. 
Austria and education, 8. 



B. 

Baden, Grand Duchy of, 81. 

Ballot and the Bible, the, 223. 

Ballot, the, among Mormon women, 144, 

Ballot, the, and illiteracy, 17. 

Ballot, the, and the Negro. 76. 

Baptists, Work of Northern Baptists among Freed- 

men, 195. 
Bavaria, Upper, 86. 
Beach Service, the, 228. 
Belgium and education, 11. 
Belief in the existence of God the supreme reason 

of virtue, 216. 
Benedict Institute, 196. 
Benevolence, Individual Northern, to the South for 

education, 201. 
Berea College, Ky., 176. 
Bible in the schools, 90. 
Bible, the Ballot and the, 223. 
Biddle University, 194. 
Bishop College, 196. 

Black pariahs and white brahmins in the South, 68. 
Blair, Hon. H. W., address of 41. 
Blessings of gratuitous education, 49. 
" Board schools " in England, 39. 
Book of Mormon, 130, 133. 
" Boss " system in politics, 19. 
Braden, Rev. Johu, D.D., address by, 178. 
Brain versus brawn, 17. 
Brainerd Institute, 194. 
Brazil, education in, 14. 
Brigham Young, 129. 
Bright, -lohn, and education, 11. 
Brougham, Lord, and education, 9. 
Burniah and Siam, 15. 
Bussey, Gen. Cyrus, remarks by, 211. 

C. 

Caldwell, Rev. L. B., Ph.D., address by, 31. 

Campbell, Rev. J. P., D.D., address by, 65. 

Carlisle Institute, 109. 

Carroll, H. K., Esq., address by, 106. 

Caste in the U. S., 66. 

Catholic Church, the, and public schools, 216. 

Caucus Reform, 19. 

Cavour, Count, 12. 

Census of 1880 and the colored population, 58. 

Centralized systems of public instruction, 39. 

Children must be got into school, 164. 

Children of polygamists, 53. 

Children of the poor and debauched, 18. 

Children of Utah should be put into schools, 130. 

Chtli, progress of education in, 14. 

China, education in, 13. 

Chinese population in the U. S., 57. 

Christ in American Education, 207. 

Christian benevolence in the South, 50. 

Christian education as a factor in our national 

life, 219. 
Christian Education : what is it ? 208. 
Christianity and Education, 15. 
Christianity in its relations to Indian civilization, 99. 
Christian schooling an important factor, 159. 
Church and school, 86. 
Church and State in Chili, 14. 
Church life among the colored people, 184. 
Church of Latter-Day Saints, 130. 
Church Statistics in the U. S., 48. 
Churches, a heavy responsibility on, 107. 
Churches in the U. S., 47. 
Cities contain vital sources of danger to our free 

institutions, 19. 
Cities, our Great Illiteracy in, 18. 
Cities, teachers and schools in, 50. 
Civilization, Christianity in relation to Indian, 99. 
Civil War, the, 58. 
Claims of the illiterate, 24. 
Climatic changes produced the various races, 62. 
Closing Remarks, 233. 



263 



CHRISTIAN EDUCATOBS IN COUNCIL. 



Co-education for the sexes, 22. 

CoJlej^e and university, and their work In the 
South, 33. 

College students in New England, 50. 

Collegiate education adds from two to three hun- 
dred per cent, to man's produccive power, 81. 

Colombia, progress of education in, 14. 

Colonies, the British, and education, 10. 

Colonization of the Negro a failure, 63. 

Colonization, the Negro free to adopt it or not, 78. 

Colored cadets at West Point, 64. 

Color line affirmed to have no existence, 69. 

Color line, the, harmful, 57. 

Color Line, the : What it Is, and What it Threatens, 
56. 

Common-school system of the South, S8. 

Common schools at Sitka, 125. 

Common Schools, Conditions and Prospects of Na^ 
tional Aid to, 41. 

Common Schools, National Aid to, 35. 

Common schools not free to all, 18. 

Common schools the great want of the South, 33. 

Communicants in Foreign Mission Churches, 15. 

Composite races the most vigorous, 61. 

Compulsion and the Negro, 55. 

Concerted effort in training teachers necessary, 164. 

Condition, not color, the test, 65. 

Conditions and Prospects of Temporary National 
Aid to Common Schools, 41. 

Congress has power to suppress Mormonism, 137. 

Congress, Memorial to, 235. 

Congressional Globe, extracts from, 234. 

Conscience, the Bible the text-book of the, 226. 

Cook, Rev. Joseph, 16. 

Cookman Institute, 63. 

Corporations, our great, 20. 

Correcting popular errors in regard to Indians, 104. 

Council of Education, England, 10. 

Coyner, Prof. John M., Paper by, 136. 

Crime, a, to teach Negroes, 64. 

Crime mostly committed by ignorant persons, 83. 

Criminals in United States, 86. 

(•row Creek Agency, 101. 

Curry, Rev. J. L. M., D.D., Paper by, 204. 

Cushing, Rev. C. W., D.D., Paper by, 87. 

D. 

Danger of Delay, the, 25. 

Danger from ignorance of voters, 38. 

Danger Line in Negro Education, 67. 

Dark Continent, the, 78. 

Denmark, Education In, 11. 

Danubian Principalities, the, 12. 

Darnell, Prof. S. B., Address by, 63. 

Delay, the Danger of, 25. 

Despotism, Mormonism a, 136. 

Destiny of the Negro in America, 60. 

Dickerson, Rev. W. P., D.D., Address by, 30. 

Disloyalty of Mormons, and Education in Utah, 136. 

Doctrines of Mormonism, the, 147. 

Doherty, Robert R., Esq., Address by, 21. 

Donnat, Leon, 13. 

Dow, Lorenzo, 59. 

Draper, Dr., 60. 

Dugdale, R. L., 20, 51. 

Duty of National Government to aid Common 
Schools, 37. 

Duty of National Government to secure the intelli- 
gence of the masses, 26. 

Duty of the government to prevent crime, 89. 

E. 

Eaton, Hon. John, LL.D., Addresses by, 7, 47. 

Educating the Negro does not make him lazy and 
worthless, 70. 

Edu.cation adds fifty per cent, to productive power 
of laborer, 80. 

Education, Aim of, 87. 

Education a most profitable investment, 53. 

Education and elevation of the Negro Race, 55. 

Education and Man's Improvement, 7. 

Education and mission work among Indians, 103. 

Education and Sunday-schools, 10. 

Education an Indispensable Agency in the Redemp- 
tion of the Negro Race, 62. 



Education in Austria, 8 ; Belgium, 11 ; China, 13 ; 
Denmark, 11 ; England, 9 ; France, 8 ; Ger- 
many, 8 ; Greece, 13 ; Hungary, 12 ; Italy, 12; 
Japan, 14 ; Scotland, 10 ; Sweden and Nor- 
way, 11 ; British Colonies, 10 ; the South, 202 : 
South since the War, 157 ; Utah, 136. 

Education not a training of the intellect alone, 84. 

Education of our girls, 22. 

Education of the Negro in the useful arts a neces- 
sity of the hour, 77. 

Education, Relation of to Moral Character, 87. 

Education, the Christian Element in, 207. 

Education the proper work of the several States, 38. 

Education the surest preventive of pauperism, 82. 

Educational affairs in Germany, 40. 

Educational Love-feast, An, 227. 

Educational progress in the United States, 15. 

Educational Work among Freedmen by M. E. 
Church. 178. 

Elective franchise and the Negroes, 18. 

Electoral College, the, 29. 

Electoral power divided between two parties, 27. 

Eleemosynary and penal institutions, 20. 

Elementary education in Russia, 13. 

Elementary instruction in India, 10. 

Elementary schools in Germany, 40. 
in Italy, 12. 
In Scotland and Ireland, 39. 

Elements of industry should be taught in our 
schools, 81. 

Emancipation, 18. 

Emancipation and the Negroes, 191. 

Emancipation epoch, the, 55. 

Emancipation in United States more a growth 
than an enactment, 59. 

Emissaries of Mormonism, 129. 

Empire the dream of the Mormon hierarchy, 144. 

Enforced ignorance of Negroes, 75. 

England and popular education. 9. 

England, Public instruction in, 39. 

English language and education, 16. 

Equal power in each individual voter, 26. 

Equal school rights in Boston, 60. 

Establishment of character in the Freedmen the 
great requisite, 65. 

Ethnic origin of the Negro, 59. 

European governments and popular education, 39. 

Europe, National Aid to Popular Education in, 38. 

Exclusive system of the Mormon Church, 132. 

Expenditure for education in India, 11. 

Expenditures for education in the South, 50. 

F. 

Failures of Mormonism, 131. 

Fairfield Institute, 194. 

Family and Church alike unequal to the task of 
lifting the burden of illiteracy, 51. 

Family ties provocative of enlightenment, 47. 

Fanners among the Negroes, 70. 

Fathers of the Republic, 54. 

Fay, Hon. E. H., letter from, 46. 

Fecundity of the Negro race, 57. 

Federal Courts, their jurisdiction over Indians, 96. 

Feeble educational systems in the South, 4i. 

Ferry, Jules, 9. 

Financial system of Mormonism its strength, 139. 

Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn., 176. 

Florida Institute, 195. 

Foreign slave-trade, the, 55. 

Forest Grove, Oregon, School at, 126. 

Former slaves fast disappearinff, 62. 

Fowler, Rev. C. H., D.D., LL.D., Address of Wel- 
come by, 167. 

France and Education, 8. 

France, State aid to schools in, 39. 

France, University of, 8. 

Franchises, great value of those granted to cur 
great corporations, 20. 

French Republic, the, and Education, 9. 

Freedman and his vote, the, 22. 

Freedmen absolutely penniless, 76. 

Freedmen's Aid Society of the M. E. Church, 197. 

Freedmen, Educational Work among by M. E. 
Church, 178. 

Freedmen progressing, the, 75. 

Friends, Society of , Work of among the Negroes, 199. 



GENERAL INDEX. 



263 



G. 

Garfield, President, Words of, 45. 

General Assembly of Georgia, Resolutions by, 46. 

Georgia, illiteracy in, 3;^. 

German States and Education, 8. 

Girl of the period, the, 23. 

Girls, education of our, S2. 

Gold mines in Alaska, 127. 

Gospel must prevail against Mormonism, 134. 

Government the one great patron of education, 53. 

Graded schools for both races in the South, 162. 

Grand special work of the Negro in America, 75. 

Grant, General, his Indian policy, 108. 

Grant, President, words of, 45. 

Grants in aid in England, 39. 

Great cities, illiteracy in, 18. 

Great towns and their influence, 19. 

Greece, Education in, 13. 

H. 

Hamilton, Rev. J. W., Address by, 58. 

Hampton Institute, 109. 

Hartzell, Rev. J. C, D.D., Addresses by, 76, 183, 232. 

Hawkins, Hon. Dexter A., Paper by, 79. 

Haworth, Hon. J. M., Paper by, 107. 

Hayes, President, Words of 45. 

Hedges, Hon. Cornelius, Letters from, 45, 12S, 146. 

Heroism of Southern teachers, 64. 

High-schools in the U. S., 48. 

Hilton, Rev. Theo. B., A.M., B.D., Paper by, 147. 

Historical Notes, 233. 

History of the Educational Work of the American 

Missionary Association, 174. 
History of the Negro in America, 55. 
Holland, Dr., 24. 

Home-born and foreign illiterates, danger from, 30. 
Homogeneity of the nation necessary, 59. 
Houses of Refuge, 20. 

How many and where are our illiterates? 345. 
How to deal with the Indians, 98. 
How to reach children of vicious parents, 18. 
Huguenots, the, 8. 
Hungary, Education in, 12. 
Huxley, Prof., 20. 

I. 

Ideas, the present an age of, 168. 

Ignorance and crime, prevalence of, in Ireland, 79. 

Ignorant voters increasing, 248. 

Illiteracy among the Negroes, 29, 47, 60. 

and poverty in the South, 204. 

in the ballot, 17. 

in Africa, 14. 

in cities, 246. 

Increase of among voters in the U. S., 36. 

In England, 9. 

in France, 9, 83. 

In Italy, 12. 

In New England in 1870, 83. 

In Quebec, 10. 

In Russia, 13. 

in Turkey, 13. 

In our great cities, 18. 

in Portugal, 12. 

In the immigrant classes, 21. 

In the North, 28. 

In the slave States, 50. 

in Spain, 12. 

in the U. S., 17, 22, 51, 85. 
Illiteracy, Wealth, Pauperism, and Crime, 79. 
Illiterate voters in the South, white and colored, 68. 
Illiterates in the South and the census of 1880, 51. 
Immigration and illiteracy, 21. 
Importance of early training, 49. 
Improvement, Education a Measure of Man's, 7. 
Income and expenditures for public schools in 

U. S., 248. 
Increase of M. E. Church in the Border States, 185. 
Independence, American, 58. 
Indian Census of 1880, 117. 
Increased value of an educated population, 51. 
Indian children in Alaska, 52. 
Indian children in TJ. S., 52. 
Indian civihzation a success, 114. 
Indian Civilization, Christianity in relation to, 99. 



Indian education, 10. 

Indian education, practical results of, 107. 

Indian, Legal Status of the, 93. 

Indian Polii/y of Gen. Grant, 108. 

Indian Pmblem, the American, 91. 

Indian ProbUMn, woman's work in solving the, 102. 

Indian Question, a new phase of the, 105. 

Indian Question, the, 10. 

Indian Rights Association, the, 99. 

Indian Tribes of Alaslia, the, 118. 

Indians are teachable, 106. 

can be educated, 91. 

excluded from contact with civilization, 95. 

have much to learn, 91. 

have no means of legal redress, 97. 

ready and willing to receive civilization, 93. 
Individual Northern Benevolence to the South for 

Education, 201. 
Industrial education needed in the South, 165. 
Industrial schools, 20. 
Industry and economy not enough to amass 

wealth, 79. 
Influence of ignorance upon industry, 52. 
Iliff, Rev. T. C, Letter from, 146. 
Innuits, the, of Alaska, 121. 
Integrity of the Negro, 63. 
Intellectual Culture, 88. 
Intelligence and illitei-acy, 29. 
Intelligence necessary to the proper exercise of 

electoral iwwer, 26. 
Intelligence of the country must be awakened, 18. 
Interstate slave-trade, the, 55. 
Introductory Remarks by Gen. Cyrus Bussey, 211, 
Introductory Remarks by Gen. T. J. Morgan, 91. 
Italy, education and illiteracy in, 12. 
Ireland, prevalence of crime in, 79. 

J. 

Jackson, Rev. Sheldon, D.D., Address of, 118. 

Japan, Education in, 14. 

Jesuits, the, and education, 85. 

John F. Slater Fund, 201. 

Joyce, Rev. I. W., D.D., Address by, 227. 

Johnson, Rev. Herrick, Address by, 17. 

Journal of Proceedings, 237. 

Jukes Family, the, 20, 51. 

K. 

Keeping School, the South, the North, and the Na- 
tion, 157. 
Kendall, Rev. Henry, D.D., Address by, 130. 

Kentucky and white illiteracy, 28. 

Kentucky Normal School, 196. 

Kidder, Rev. C. H., Address by, 105. 

Kiowa Agency, 111. 

Knox, John, 10. 

Kotzebue Sound, 120. 

Kynett, Rev. A. J., D.D., Addresses by, 129, 231. 

Labor of the Negro, 55. 

Lack of Negro education, danger in the, 68. 

Land tenure among the Indians, 94. 

Last Words, 2:31. 

Lawrence, Lord, 15. 

Laws against polygamy should be enforced, 130. 

Law-schools in the U. S., 49. 

Lax appreciation of the dignity of manhood, 22. 

Laxity of morals engendered by Mormonism, 143. 

Legal Status of the Indian, 93. 

Legislative work during 1882-83, 36. 

Legislators, views of respecting national aid to 

common schools, 43. 
Leland University, 196. 
Letters from : 

Hon. E. H. Fay, 46. 

Hon. Cornelius Hedges, 45, 128, 146. 

Rev. T. C. Iliff, 146. 

Rev. Robt. G. M'Niece, 138. 

Hon. G. J. Orr, 46. 

Hon. Daniel Pratt, 46. 

Hon. Hiram Price, 127. 

Hon. Thomas B. Stockwell, 46. 

Hon. H. M. Teller, 91. 

Hon. Hugh L. Thompson, 46. 

Hon. Wm. F. Welcker, 46, 127, 146. 



264 



CHRISTIAN EDU0AT0B8 IN COUNCIL. 



Lincoln, Abraham, and Negro suffrage, 59. 
Local necessities of the South, 50. 
Logan, Hon. John, 50. 
Love-Feast, an educational, 327. 
Lower Brule Agency, 101. 

M. 

Machinery, startling increase In use of, 80. 

Maine, illiteracy in, 33. 

Males of voting age and illiteracy, 224. 

Manhood of the Negro Asserted, 62. 

Manual labor schools for Indians, 92. 

Map of S. E. Alaska, 119. 

Marshall, Rev. C. K., D.D., Address of, 77. 

Marvelous growth of the Soutb, 170. 

Marvelous progress of Negroes since emancip'n, 75. 

Massachusetts system, the, 85. 

Massachusetts the first colony to pass an enactment 
in favor of human slavery, 58. 

Maternal schools in France, 53. 

Mayo, Rev. A. D., Paper by, 157. 

M'Niece, Rev. Robert G., Letter from, 138. 

Mechanical skill, advance of the Negro in, 76. 

Medical Schools in United States, 49. 

Memorial to Congress, 235. 

Mercantilism, danger of, 23. 

Methodist Episcopal Church in the South since the 
War, 183. 

Methodist Episcopal Church, Work of Among the 
Freedmen, 178. 

Methods by which Negroes are kept poor, 211. 

Mexico, progress of education in, 14. 

M'Gillycuddy, Dr., 101. 

"Middle Passage," the, 55, 72. 

Miscegenation in the United States, 60. 

Missionary effort In Utah, 135. 

Missionary labors aid education, 15. 

Mission presses ia India, 16. 

Mission schools in Asia, 15. 

Missions in South Africa, 15. 

Missions, Presbyterian Board of, 194. 

Mixed races superior bodily and mentally, 61. 

Modoc Indians, the, 112. 

Mohammed, 133. 

Mohammedanism and enlightenment, 13. 

Monetary aid from government necessary to estab- 
lish Southern schools, 166. 

Moral faculties of the young, training the, 24. 

Moral improvement of the Ne.sro, 76. 

Morality and Crime, Relation of Education to, 82. 

Moral personality, the nation a, 322. 

Morehouse, Rev. H. L., D.D., Paper by, 195 ; Re- 
marks by, 71. 

Morgan, Gen. T. J., Address by, 219 ; Introductory 
Remarks by, 91. 

Mormonism a system of crime, 129. 

Mormonism : Efforts of Christian Churches, 130. 

Mormonism no longer a local question, 136. 

Mormonism, the Doctrines of, 147. 

Mormon Problem, the American, 129. 

Moss, Rev, Lemuel, D.D., Sermon by, 207. 

Mothers, our future, 22. 

Mulatto population In United States, 60. 

N. 
Nantes, Revocation of the Edict of, 8. 
Natchez Seminary, 196. 

National Aid necessary to uplift the Negro, 60. 
National Aid, proposed distribution of, 248. 
National Aid to Common Schools, 35. 

a constitutional duty, 34. 

Conditions and Prospects of, 41. 

resolutio7is favoring, 35. 

to popular education almost universal in 
Europe, 40. 

to popular education in Europe, 38. 
National Bureau of Education, the, 39. 
National Educational Committee for 1882-83, 233. 
National Indian Association, 105. 
National Life, Christian Education as a Factor in 

our, 219. 
National type of race in the New World, 60. 
Nation, the, possesses the power to aid popular ed- 
ucation, 54. 
Natural wealth of the South, 31. 



Nauvoo, 131. 

Necessity of a Christian Education, 88. 

of industrial training, 53. 

of mental culture for the preservation of otir 
civil liberty, 214. 

of politically incorporating the Indian tribes. 

Need of wise laws to deal with Indians, 98. 
Negro and Colonization, C3. 

artisans needed In Africa and in our own 
South, 78. 
Negro : capable of intelligent work, 78. 

he accepts the American idea, 67. 

he must be educated on this continent, 78. 

his education necessarily slow, 63. 

his idea of home, 64. 

he must have instruction in morality, 74. 

he must not despise manual labor, 71. 

here by invitation, 55. 

ignorance in the South, 50. 

not deteriorated by learning, 70. 

to solve his own problem, 73. 

twenty thousand of them in the South, 76. 
Negro Education, the Danger Line In, 67. 
Negro ilhteracy, 60. 
Negro in America, the, 55. 
Negro in America : His Special Work, 72. 
Negro in America the problem of a century, 58. 
Negro In Slavery and In Freedom — Summary of 

work by Presbyterians, 188. 
Negro labor, 55. 

Negro property owners in the South, 70. 
Negro race, as a whole, neither lazy, thriftless, nor 

dishonest, 63. 
Negro Race, Education an Indispensable Agency 

in the Redemption of the, 62. 
Negro Suffrage, Abraham Lincoln and, 59. 
Negro, the, and his Assimilation in America, 58. 
Negro, the, and the prosperity of this country, 55. 
Netherlands, Education in, 11. 
New England fathers, the, 48. 
New Jersey, illiteracy in, 33. 
Newman, Mrs. Angie F., Paper by, 141. 
Newman, Rev. J. P., D.D., LL.D., Sermon by, 213. 
New Phase of the Indian Question, a, 105. 
New West Education Commission, 135. 
New York, illiteracy in, 33. 
Nez Perces, the, 112. 

No education complete which is not Christian, 221. 
Non-attendants at public schools in South, 50, 51, 
Non-existence of the color line, 69. 
Non-voting population, the, 52. 
No races in America that have not mingled, 60. 
Normal schools in Japan, 14. 
North Carolina, illiteracy in, 88. 
Northern Baptists, Work of among Freedmen, 195. 
Northern educational work in the South, special re- 
sults of, 197. 
Northern pbllanthropists, 73. 
Northern Teachers and Missionaries in the South, 

Address of Welcome to, 167. 
Norway and Sweden, Education in, 11. 
No separate schools for Negroes needed, 67. 
Number and location of our Ignorant voters, 346. 

O. 

Oceanica, 15. 
Obstructive classes, 166. 

Only Negroes flt to teach the natives of their father- 
land, 78. 
On the Beach, 228. 
Opening Remarks by : 

Rev. H. L. Morehouse, D.D., 71. 

Rev. R. S. Rust, D.D., 55. 

Rev. W. F. Dickerson, D.D., 30. 
Optimists and pessimists, 83. 
Our adult illiterates, 245. 
Our duty to the Indian unfulfilled, 106. 
Orr, Hon. G. J., Letter from, 46. 

P. 

Painter, Prof. C C, Report of, 35. 
Pancoast, Henry S., Paper by, 93. 
Papers by : 

Rev. R. H. Allen, D.D., 188. 

Rev. C W. Cushing, D.D., 87. 



GENERAL INDEX. 



265 



Papers by : 

Hon. Dexter A. Hawkins, A.M., 79. 

Hon. J. M. Haworth, Esq., 107. 

Rev. Theophilus B. HUton, A.M., B.D., 147. 

Rev. A. D. Mayo, 157. 

Rev. H. L. Moiehouse, D.D., 195. 

Mrs. Angle F. Newman, 141. 

Henry S. Pancoast, Esq., 93. 

Rev. M. E. Strieby, D.D., 174. 

Rev. J. G. Vaughan, B.D., 202. 

Herbert Welsh, Esq., 99. 

Hon. J. P. Wickersham, 38. 
Parochial schools, 84. 
Parochial schools and public schools, 85. 
Paul Tulane's gift, 201. 

Pauperism and Crime, Hliteracy and Wealth, 79. 
Peabody Educational Fund, 50, 1.58, 201. 
Percentage of illiterates among whites in South, 34. 
Peculiar work of the American Negro, 72. 
Peters, Hon. B., Addr'ss by, 18. 
Petition, the right of, should be e.xercised, 43. 
Petition to government for money aopropriations 

for Indians, 104. 
Petty African princes, 55. 
Pilgrim Fathers, 58. 

Plea for Practical Education for the Negro, 77. 
Plymouth Rock, 58. 

Policy of isolation with regard to Indians, 95. 
Political action and illiterates, 52. 
Political relations between Indians and our gov- 
ernment, 95. 
Polk County, Tenn., illiteracy in, 32. 
Polygamy, 133. 

Polygamy the strength of Mormonism, 134. 
Polygamy Woman's Creed of Mormonism, 141. 
Poor Whites of the South, the, 31. 
Popular Education in Europe, National Aid to, 38. 
Population and property in the United States, 247. 
Poverty and Illiteracy in the South, 204. 
Power of the government to appropriate money In 

aid of popular education, 42. 
Practical Education for the Negro, Plea for, 77. 
Practical Results of Indian Education, 107. 
Pratt, Hon. Daniel L., Letter from, 46. 
Pratt, Capt. H. R., Address by, 114. 
Prejudice against the Negro in America, 65. 
Prejudice at present in favor of separate schools 

for whites and blacks, 67. 
Preparation of Freedmen for citizenship, 55. 
Presbyterian Church— Summary of Work by, 188. 
Present need of national aid to common schools, 42. 
Present need of the South, 18. 
Presidents, Our, and National Aid, 18. 
Presidents, the Voices of Four, 45. 
Press, the Catholic, on popular education, 217. 
Price, Hon. Hiram, Letter from, 127. 
Price, Rev. J. C, A.M., Address by, 72. 
Priesthood, the Mormon, 139. 
Primary schools in India, 11. 
Printing a promoter of education, 8. 
Private benefactions to Southern education, 158. 
Proceedings, Journal of, 237. 
Progressing, the Freedmen, 75. 
Progress of Negroes since Emancipation, 75. 
Profligacy of Negro race, 63. 
Proportion of mulatto to white population, 60. 
Proposed distribution of national aid, 248. 
Proposed Measure in House of Representatives, 36. 
Prospects of success in gaining national aid to 

common schools, 44. 
Protestant Episcopal Church, Work of among Ne- 
groes since the War, 199. 
Public and private schools in the United States, 347. 
Public instruction at the North, 39. 
Public school education in the South, 248. 
Public schools in the British Isles, 39. 
Public-school system does not reach the poor, 18. 
Public schools, the, an industrial agency, 23. 
Public schools for white and black aUke, 67. 
Public schools in the South, 161. 
Public sentiment and the public .schools, 67 
Public weal affected only by majorities, 27. 

Q. 

Quebec, Illiteracy in Province of, 10. 
Quinton, Mrs. A. S., Address of, 103. 



R. 

Race distinctions and prejudices in U. S., 56. 

Race schools unchristian, 68. 

Racial type in the U. S., 60. 

Rapid rise of some colored men, 64. 

Ratio of increase of white and colored population 
in the U. S., .57. 

Recruiting of Mormons must be stopped, 130. 

Redemption of the Negro Race, Education a Neces- 
sary Agency in the, 02. 

Reform schools, 20. 

Relation of Education to Moral Character, 8T. 

Relation of Education to Wealth and Morality, 79. 

Relative fecundity of white and colored races, 63. 

Religious books and periodicals important factors 
in spread of education, 48. 

Religious nature of the colored man, 170, 

Remarks by Rev. H. L. Morehouse, D.D., 71. 

Removals of the Indians, 95. 

Report of Secretary Teller for 1882. 

Republican idea, the, 27. 

Republican Party, the, 44. 

Republic, what are the safeguards of this ? 213. 

Reservations a failure, 115. 

Resolution by Rev. Dr. M. E. Strieby, 34. 

Resolution on Indian Education, 127. 

Resolution respecting Mormonism, 146. 

Resolutions adopted by General Assembly of 
Georgia, 46. 

Resources of this country, 171. 

Responsive Address by Prof. Saulsbury, 173. 

Results of Indian education, 113. 

Revival of Education in the New South, 163. 

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 8. 

Richmond Institute, 196. 

Risk of an ignorant voting population, 70. 

Roger Williams University, 197. 

Roman Catholicism and the Negro, 203. 

Romish Church and Education, 216. 

Russia and Turkey, 12. 

Russia, Education in, 13. 

Rust, Rev. R. S., D.D., Addresses by, 55, 197, 

Ryerson, Rev. Egerton, 10. 

S. 

Sadowa and Sedan, 7. 

Safeguard of the Nation, Religious Education 
the, 212. 

Sandwich Islanders, Conversion of the, 16. 

Santee Reservation, 101. 

Saulsbury, Prof., Responsive Address by, 173. 

Savages, what shall be done with our? 106. 

Scheme for education of Indian youth, 92. 

School Act of 1870, the English, 9. 

School at Hampton, Va., 176. 

School attendance In Loudon, 9. 

Schools among the Indians, 109. 
in Alaska, 126. 
in India, 10. 

of New England, the, 49. 
should be open to white and colored alike, 67. 

School, the South, the North, and the Nation Keep- 
ing, 1.57. 

Science and the general government, 53. 

Scotia Seminary, li)4. 

Scotland, Popular Education in, 10. 

Secretary's Report, 35. 

Sectional South, no longer a, 169. 

Self-preservation makes the common school a ne- 
cessity, 20. 

Sentiment in favor of public schools not very 
strong in some parts of the South, 29. 

Separate schools at present a necessity in the 
South, 69. 

Separate schools for Indians not desirable, 116. 

Sepoy Rebellion, the, 10. 

Serious obstacles in the way of a general diffusion 
of intelligence, 22. 

Sermons : 

Christian Element in Education, the, 207. 
Religious Education the Safeguard of the Na- 
tion, 212. 

Seven millions of colored people in the U. S., 73. 

Sex in education, 22. 

Shaw University, 197. 

Shreveport District Conference, telegram from, 206. 



266 



CHBISTIAN EDU0AT0B8 IN COUNCIL. 



Siam and Burmah, 15. 

Signidcance of tbe Assembly, 231. 

Siljestrom, P.A., 12. 

Sioux and Kiowas, 111. 

Sioux Reservation, a Visit to, 99. 

Slavery deadened the Negro's moral sensibility, 74. 

Slavery, its existence an accident, 66. 

Slaves shut out from school, 157. 

Slave States, the, 50. 

Slave States unable to pay expenses of common 
schools, 81. 

Slave-trade, the, 55. 

Smith, Joseph, 131. 

Social Code, the New, 57. 

Society of Friends and Indian Agencies, 108. 

Society of Friends, Work of among the Negroes, 1&9. 

South America, Survey of, 14. 

South Carolina, illiterate voters in, 28. 

South, Education in the, since the War, 157. 

Southern Churches and Education since War, 201. 

South, North, and Nation, the. Keeping School, 
Paper by Rev. A. D. Mayo, 157. 

South, the Poor Whites of the, 31. 

Southern schools inadequate, 36. 

Southern States, illiteracy in, 28. 

Spanish Population of New Mexico, 52. 

Special Results of Northern Educational Work in 
the South, 197. 

Special schools in Japan, 14. 

Special services on Sunday, 227. 

Special taxing of great wealth, 20. 

Special work of the Churches, 48. 

Special work of the Negro in America, 72. 

State aid in the countries of Europe, 40. 

State laws cannot prevent mixed marriages, 61. 

Statesman, the true, will see the necessity of con- 
science in politics, 214. 

Statistical Summaries, 250. 

Statistics of Indian education, the, 10. 

Stevens, Dr. Abel, 57. 

Stockwell, Hon. Thomas B., letter from, 46. 

Stokes, Rev. E. H., D.D., Address by, 237. 

Strieby, Rev. Dr. M. E., D.D., Paper by, 174. 
Resolution by, 34. 

Students, medical and legal in IT. S., 49. 

Stumbling-blocks, or Stepping-stones? 21. 

Success, Indian civilization a, 114. 

Suffrage, an educated, needed, 71. 

Summary of the work, 231. 

Summary of Year's Work of National Education 
Committee, 35. 

Sumner, Charles, 30, 60. 

Sunday-school Union, the English, 10. 

Sunday, special services on, 227. 

Surf-Meeting, the, 228. 

Surplus revenue in U. S., 38. 

Surprising fecundity of the colored people In the 
South, 29. 

Sweden and Norway, Education in, 11. 

Switzerland, 85. 

System of National Aid to Common Schools in En- 
gland, 39. 

T. 

Tabernacle, the Mormon, 336. 

Taj Mahal, the, 172. 

Talladega College, Ala., 177. 

Tanner, Rev. B. T., Address by, 56. 

Taxable property in the South, 51. 

Taxation for public schools, 248. 

Teachers, American, in South America, 14. 

Teachers and Missionaries in the South, Resolution 

of thanks to, 206. 
Teachings of Morraonism, 142. 
Teller, Hon. H. M., Letter from, 91. 
Tennessee, illiteracy in. 32. 
The Color Line : What is It ? 56. 
The nation pledged to protect the Negro, 59. 
The Nation the only Patron of Education equal to 

the present emergency, 47. 
The Negro the " survival of the fittest," 62. 
Theology, Schools of in the U. S., 48. 
The South unable to assume the burden, 41. 
Thlinket, the, of Alaska, 123. 
Thompson, Hon. Hugh L., Letter from, 46. 



Thoroughness of organization one source of Mor- 
mon strength, 139. 

Thorough organization of the Mormon Church, 132. 

Tinneh, the, of Alaska, 133. 

Tongass, the, of Alaska, 125. 

Too much education, danger of, 70. 

Tourg(^e, Hon. Albion W., Address by, 25. 

Training the moral faculties of the young, 34. 

Treaties with the Indians, 95. 

Tribal relations of the Indians to the National 
Government, 94. 

Turkey, Ignorance in, 13. 

U. 

Unitarians, Work of among tbe Negroes, 199. 

United States, General Survey of, 15. 

United States, Illiteracy in the, 17. 

University of France, 8, 39. 

Utah Problem, the. Address of Dr. A. J. Kynett, 129. 

V. 

Vast amount of work performed by the Negro in 

Vaughan, Rev.', J. G., B.D., Paper by, 302. 

Vaughan, Robert, D.D., 19. 

Venice and Peru, fate of, 24. 

Voices of Four Presidents, the, 45. 

Voluntary Charity of the North, 29. 

Voters, number and location of our ignorant, 246. 

Vote, the White Illiterate in the South, 68. 

W. 

Walden, Rev. J. M., LL.D., Address by, 223. 

Wallingford Academy, 194. 

Wards of society, 20. 

Ward, Wm. Hayes, D.D., Address by, 67. 

War Expenditures and Education in Europe, 13. 

Wayland Seminary, 196. 

Wealth and Morality, Relation of Education to, 79, 

Wealth, Pauperism, and Crime, 79. 

Welcker' Hon. Wm.' F., Letters from, 46, 127, 146. 

Welsh, Hon. Herbert, Paper by, 99. 

West Point and the Colored Cadets, 64. 

What has woman done on behalf of the Indian ? 103. 

What is Christian Education ? 208. 

What shall be Done with our Savages? 106. 

What shall be Done with the Indian? 91. 

What the Color Line Threatens, 56. 

White and colored population in U. S., 57. 

White brahmins and black pariahs, 68. 

White illiteracy in Southern States, 34. 

White illiteracy in the South, 29. 

White illiterate vote in the South, 68. 

White men responsible for the Negro's condition 
to-day, 76. 

White men responsible for the pjesence of the Ne- 
gro in America, 62. 

Whites as backward as blacks in the matter of edu- 
cation, 68. 

Wliite teachers in the South, 73. 

Who is the Negro? 62. 

Wickersham, Hon. J. P., Paper by, 38. 

Wider possibilities open to the Negro, 64. 

Wild tribes, opposition to schools among, 110. 

Woman can help in the sphere of law, 104. 

Womanhood, want of reverence for, 22. 

Woman's Baptist Home Mission Society, 196. 

Woman's National Indian Association," 102. 

Woman's Work in Solving the Indian Problem, 102. 

Women, illiterate, in the South, 34. 

Words, Last, 231. 

Work of Northern Baptists among Freedmen, 195. 

Work of the Negro in America outlined, 74. 

Work of the P. E. Church among the Negroes since 
the War, 199. 

Work of Women in solving the Indian Problem, 102. 

Y. 

Year's Work, the. Report of Secretary, 35. 
Young, Brigham, 129. 

Z. 

Zina, Sister, 145. 

Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution, 143. 




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1-lbrory Edition, in one large octavo volume, printed 
on hpa\'}' paper. Extra cloth binding, price, ?2 j m 
half calf or half morocco, $5. 



Fine Edition, in two volumes, octaTo, over 1,200 pages, 
large pica type. Bound in extra cloth, price per set, 
$5 ; in half calf or halt morocco, $10. 



By Rev. E. H. Plumptre, D.D., with Preface hy 
C. J. Ellicott, D.D. il. 
A limited number of sets can be supplied in flexible 
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sets only. Price, $U. 

NOW RE.\DY Complefe Desoriptive Catalogue of Illustrated and Fine .\rt Books, Juvenile 
and Educational Works, which will be gent free to any address on application. 

Successors to CASSELL, PETTER, GALPIN, & CO., 

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The Ghautauqua Text-Books. 



No. 1. Biblical Exploration; or, How to Study the Bible. By J. H. Vincent, D.D. 

Full and rich $0 10 

No. 2. Studies of the Stars. A Pocket Guide to the Science of Astronomy. By 

H. W. Warren, D.D 10 

No. 3. Bible Studies for Little People. By B. T. Vincent 10 

No. 4. English History. By J. H. Vincent, D.D 10 

No. 5. Greek History. By J. H. Vincent, D.D 10 

No. 6. Greek Literature. By A. D. Vail, D.D. 20 

No. 7. Memorial Days of the Chautanqua Literary and Scientific Circle 10 

No. 8. What Noted Men Think of the Bible. By L. T. Townsend, D.D 10 

No. 9. William Cullen Bryant 10 

No. 10. What is Education ? By Prof. William F. Phelps, A.M..... 10 

No. 11. Socrates. By Prof. William F. Phelps, A.M 10 

No. 12. Pestalozzi. By Prof. William F. Phelps, A.M 10 

No. 13. Anglo-Saxon. By Prof. Albert S. Cook 20 

No. 14. Horace Mann. By Prof. Wm. F. Phelps, A.M 10 

No. 15. Froebel. By Prof. William F. Phelps, A.M 10 

No. 16. Roman History. By J. H.Vincent, D.D 10 

No. 17. Roger Ascham and John Sturm. Glimpses of Education in the Sixteenth 

Century. By Prof William F. Phelps, A.M 10 

No. 18. Christian Evidences. By J. H. Vincent, D.D 10 

No. 19. The Book of Books. By J. M. Freeman, D.D 10 

No. 20. The Chautauqua Hand-Book. By J. H. Vincent, D.D 10 

No. 21. American History. By J. L. Hurlbut, A.M 10 

No. 22. Biblical Biology. By J. H. Wythe, A.M., M.D 10 

No. 23. English Literature. By Prof. J. H. Gilmore 10 

No. 24. Canadian History. By James L. Hughes 10 

No. 25. Self-Education. By Joseph Alden, D.D., LL.D 10 

No. 26. The Tabernacle. By Eev. John C. Hill 10 

No. 27. Readings from Ancient Classics 10 

No. 28. Manners and Customs of Bible Times. By J. M. Freeman, D.D 10 

No. 29. Man's Antiquity and Language. By M. S. Terry, D.D 10 

No. 30. The World of Missions. By Henry K. Carroll 10 

No. 31. What Noted Men Think of Christ. By L. T. Townsend, D.D 10 

No. 32. A Brief Outline of the History of Art. By Miss Julia B. De Forest 10 

No. 33. Elihu Burritt : The Learned Blacksmith. By Charles Northend 10 

No. 34. Asiatic History : China, Corea, Japan. By Eev. William Elliot Griffis. . 10 

No. 35. Outlines of General History. By J. H. Vincent, D.D 10 

No. 36. Assembly Bible Outlines. By J. H. Vincent, D.D 10 

No. 37. Assembly Normal Outlines. By J. H. Vincent, D.D 10 

No. 38. The Life of Christ. By Eev. J. L. Hurlbut, M. A 10 

No. 39. The Sunday-School Normal Class. By J. H. Vincent, D.D 10 

No. 40. Normal Outlines for Primary Teachers. By Mrs. W. F. Crafts 10 

No. 41. The Teacher Before His Class. By James L. Hughes 10 

No. 42. Outlines of Methodism. By James M'Gee 10 

No. 43. Good Manners. By J P 10 

No. 44. Jerusalem, the Holy City. By S. J. M. Eaton, D.D 10 

No. 45. Alcohol. By C. H. Buck, A.M 10 

No. 46. Parliamentary Practice. By Eev. T. B. Neely, A.M 10 

No. 47. Readings from Herbert Spencer on Education. Selected by Eev. 

Jesse B. Young, A.M 10 



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Published by G. & C. MERRIAM & CO., Springfield, Mass. 

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